LIBYA. LIBYA SAYS BULGARIAN NURSES ROW IS NOT POLITICAL

Libya said the row over the Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting children with the HIV virus was an issue that must be settled legally rather than politically.
"It is a legal problem which has nothing to do with politics," Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem said on a visit to Croatia, stressing ties between Libya and Bulgaria would remain strong.
Tripoli had come under mounting pressure from the United States and Europe to release the five Bulgarian nurses who along with a Palestinian doctor faced death by firing squad in Libya.
The six had been found guilty in May 2004 of knowingly injecting 426 children with blood tainted with the AIDS-causing HIV virus at a hospital in Benghazi, northern Libya. "I assure you that there is no political basis for the problem. It is a humanitarian problem," Ghanem told journalists in Zagreb after meeting with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.