QUADRILATERAL negotiations between representatives of Libya, Bulgaria, the US and the EU were being held in Sofia "in conditions of full discretion," Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said on January 28.
The negotiations were aimed at implementing an EU humanitarian plan for anti-AIDS assistance to the city of Benghazi, Libya.
The plan is part of the efforts by the international community to resolve the case of the five Bulgaria nurses and a Palestinian doctor facing trial in Libya for allegedly deliberately infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV in 1998.
The six medics currently are awaiting a new trial. On May 6 2005, the six medics were sentenced to death. On December 25 2005, after the medics lodged an appeal, the Libyan Supreme Court ruled that the case be returned to the Criminal Court in Benghazi. Meetings like the current one in Sofia had been taking place since the spring of 2005 and this is the first time that Sofia played host.
Speaking to Bulgarian news agency BTA at the start of the meeting in the Danube city of Rousse, Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said that the past few months had convinced him that in such cases the role of solidarity and public opinion carried the greatest weight.
Institutions in various states were working to save the Bulgarian nurses in Libya, and public opinion and the media were insisting on this, Kalfin said.
Participants in the meeting also considered ways to attain the goals of the international fund set up to assist the families of HIV-positive children in Libya.
Marc Pierini, European Commission representative in Libya and chairperson of the fund's management board, briefed participants in the forum on the fund's operation.
The fund was set up as an NGO on January 19 2006 and was given "a green light" by Libya's General People's Congress (the Libyan parliament).
Quadrilateral meetings have been held since the spring of 2005 and the next meeting is scheduled for February 13.
On January 21, Plovdiv mayor Doctor Ivan Chomakov, who chairs the Bulgarian Civic Organisation for Promoting Bilateral Ties with Libya (COPBTL), participated on behalf of Bulgaria in a meeting of the fund with the Association of the Parents of Libyan Children Infected with HIV.
The meeting was held in Tripoli. Parents demanded that Bulgaria pay compensation of 10 million euro to each of the children - a total of 4.4 billion euro.
In response, Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Dimitar Ttsanchev said that Bulgaria had welcomed the setting up of the fund, and all efforts to help the HIV-positive children, but the official position of the Government was that the nurses were innocent and therefore Bulgaria should not pay compensation.
He rejected a statement by Idris Laga, the head of the Parents' Association, who told Reuters on January 21 that Bulgaria had agreed to pay the demanded sum.
Chomakov also rejected Laga's statement.
Chomakov said that he was not representing the Bulgarian state at the meeting, but only the organisation. He said that funds raised so far had reached $500 000.
"The priority goal of the fund is the treatment of the infected children and to supply medical equipment to the Benghazi children's hospital, and so far we have not reached agreement on the specific sum that every child's family will receive from the fund," Chomakov said.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria continued to receive international support for a positive outcome of the medics' trial.
On January 26, US ambassador John Beyrle told a news conference that in the coming weeks, the talks between the US, the EU, Bulgaria and Libya on the EU humanitarian plan to help the victims of the AIDS outbreak in Benghazi would lead to a final resolution.
This resolution would address the concerns regarding the Libyan children and the Bulgarian nurses and their families.
On January 31, Bjцrn von Sydow, the Speaker of the Swedish parliament said that Sweden was closely following, at the highest government level, developments in the case. Sweden fully shared the view that the further detention of the Bulgarian nurses was not acceptable.