UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he planned to...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he planned to contact the Libyan government "at a high level" about the death sentences for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus. "I am going to talk to them about the situation of the nurses and the people in this situation and to see what can be done to help them," he told The Associated Press. Western governments and human rights groups had denounced the verdicts and sentences, saying they were based on false confessions obtained through torture and designed to draw attention away from unsanitary practices at Libyan hospitals. They demanded freedom for the sentenced foreigners.