Foreign media will cover the appeal hearing in Libya's Supreme Court against the death sentences passed on five Bulgarian nurses for allegedly infecting with AIDS more than 400 Libyan children.

The Bulgarian National Radio reported the information, citing a diplomatic source in Tripoli.

A five-member panel of the Supreme Cassation Court will convene at 10 am Bulgarian time on Tuesday. Under local legislation the court is due to render its ruling within two months.

The Bulgarians' lawyers Plamen Yalnuzov, Hari Haralampiev, Georgi Gatev and their Libyan colleague were to visit the Bulgarian nurses at Judeyda prison on Monday, but they were denied access.

In May 2004 Libya found five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor guilty of having caused the death of 40 children and of infecting more than 400 others with HIV at a Benghazi hospital.

The six were sentenced to death by a firing squad, sparking cries of foul from Bulgaria and its allies the US and the EU and hampering Libya's efforts to recover ties with the West after decades of isolation.

The verdicts were based on confessions that the nurses, who remain jailed, say were extracted under torture.

Bulgaria has ruled out paying any indemnities to Libya, saying that would equal acknowledging its medical workers' guilt.

There are fears that the already protracted trial may drag on for another three years.

The medics have been in detention for five years already.

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