BRUSSELS, Jan. 22 (UPI)
An EU commissioner says Brussels is working to persuade Libya to release five Bulgarian nurses from death row, Sofia media said. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU commissioner for external relations, said the European Union also hired advisers to arrange assistance needed by families and children infected with HIV in Libya, the Bulgarian SNA reported Monday. Ferrero-Waldner said the EU will keep talking with Libya officials until the Bulgarian women and a Palestinian doctor are released from prison in Tripoli. The EU commissioner said Brussels is treating its dialogue with Libya on the issue with top priority, SNA said. On Dec. 31, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi refused to pardon the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor. Earlier in December, the medics and the doctor were sentenced by the Libyan court in Tripoli to death for deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in a Benghazi hospital in 1999. The six have been in Libyan prisons since 1999. Since then, 52 of the children have died of AIDS.

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