French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso thanked the Emir of Qatar on Tuesday for aiding the EU bid to release the six Bulgarian medics jailed in Libya.

In a joint statement, the two also emphasised the importance of the efforts EU's External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and France's first lady Cecilia Sarkozy made in recent weeks to secure the medics' return home.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who has since been granted Bulgarian citizenship, spent more than eight years in a Libyan prison.

They were sentenced to death on charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the virus that causes AIDS

Last week the Libyan authorities commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, after the relatives of the children agreed to an out-of-court financial settlement.

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