Qaddafi Not Interested in Captives Switch - Report
Politics | April 11, 2007, Wednesday
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is reportedly no longer interested in exchanging the five Bulgarian nurses, sentenced to death in Libya, for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber. Photo by www.soulpacific.com
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is no longer interested in exchanging the five Bulgarian nurses, sentenced to death in Libya, for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, Polish weekly Wprost reported.
The magazine quoted French Socialist politician Jack Lang, who traveled to Libya at the weekend to meet with Qaddafi and the Bulgarian medics.
Lang said that Qaddafi is no longer insisting on the switch and that the release of the medics was hinged on settling the financial compensation for the families of the 400 children infected with the HIV virus.
According to some reports, the issue was mooted for the first time in the late 1990s, during secret talks to free the five nurses and a doctor, who were accused of deliberately infecting the children in a hospital ward in Benghazi, in northeast Libya, with the virus.
Qaddafi is open to a wider cooperation with the European Union, which Bulgaria joined in January, concerning the fight against AIDS, Wprost quoted Lang as saying.
The financial compensation demanded by the relatives of the infected children is USD 10 M for each child, for a total of over USD 4 B, a prohibitive cost for Bulgaria, whose annual gross domestic product was EUR 25 B last year.
Bulgarian officials, however, declined to pay any "blood money", protesting the medics' innocence.
The magazine quoted French Socialist politician Jack Lang, who traveled to Libya at the weekend to meet with Qaddafi and the Bulgarian medics.
Lang said that Qaddafi is no longer insisting on the switch and that the release of the medics was hinged on settling the financial compensation for the families of the 400 children infected with the HIV virus.
According to some reports, the issue was mooted for the first time in the late 1990s, during secret talks to free the five nurses and a doctor, who were accused of deliberately infecting the children in a hospital ward in Benghazi, in northeast Libya, with the virus.
Qaddafi is open to a wider cooperation with the European Union, which Bulgaria joined in January, concerning the fight against AIDS, Wprost quoted Lang as saying.
The financial compensation demanded by the relatives of the infected children is USD 10 M for each child, for a total of over USD 4 B, a prohibitive cost for Bulgaria, whose annual gross domestic product was EUR 25 B last year.
Bulgarian officials, however, declined to pay any "blood money", protesting the medics' innocence.
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