LIBYA. BULGARIA AGREES 4.4 BLN EURO FUND IN HIV CASE

Bulgaria agreed with Libya to set up a 4.4 billion euro ($5.3 billion) fund for families of children infected with HIV in Libya, a Libyan official said. The deal was likely to defuse a standoff over five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who convicted of giving children HIV.
"The two sides reached an accord to pay 10 million (euros) for each of the 426 HIV-infected children and 20 mothers who are also contaminated with HIV," Driss Lagha, chairman of the Association for the Families of the HIV-Infected Children, said.
The conviction of the medical staff had been seen in the West as a major hindrance to Libya's efforts to end decades of diplomatic isolation, although the death sentences originally handed down were overturned on December 25, 2005. Bulgaria had cited evidence that the nurses were tortured to force them to confess, and that the epidemic started in the Benghazi hospital before they began working there, to insist that the medics were innocent. It rejected any notion of formal compensation and called the planned fund a voluntary, rather than political or diplomatic, initiative.