US ambassador John Beyrle said it is imperative that the five Bulgarian nurses, jailed in Libya in a travesty HIV trial, are released and return back home by the end of this year.

Talking to journalists in the town of Dobrich, Ambassador Beyrle reiterated that it is impossible to develop high-level relations with Libya while five Bulgarian medics are on a death row in Tripoli.

"I am convinced Libyans are well aware they will not enjoy the relations they want with the United States and Europe while the medics are behind the bars."

The US Ambassador has repeatedly ruled out any connection between the Lockerbie case and the HIV trial against the Bulgarian medics in Libya, saying it is unacceptable to talk about an exchange of the medics for the convict of the Lockerbie case.

The medics have been in detention since 1999, during which time more than 50 of the 426 infected children have died of AIDS.

The plight of the Bulgarian nurses, sentenced to death, have sparked an international outcry.

Major scientific reports by Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, and Vittorio Colizzi, an AIDS researcher at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, Italy, proved beyond doubt that unhygienic medical practices fuelled the outbreak. As a result hundreds of children in a Libyan hospital contracted HIV in the late 1990s.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!