Bulgaria leader on Libya mission

The nurses are awaiting a supreme court ruling on their appeal

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov has gone to Libya in an attempt to save five nurses sentenced to death after a mass outbreak of Aids among children.

He was officially invited by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and is expected to discuss the fate of the medics.

The five Bulgarians and one Palestinian doctor are on death row in Tripoli. Libya's supreme court is due to rule on their appeal on 31 May.

The six, detained since 1999, claim they were tortured into confessing.

Mr Parvanov is expected to meet the nurses during his two-day visit.

They were convicted by a Libyan court in May 2004 of knowingly infecting more than 380 Libyan children with tainted blood as part of an experiment. Forty-seven of the children have died since.

Experts, including Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of the virus, say the Aids epidemics broke out due to poor hygiene at the Benghazi hospital where the incident took place.

They also say that the infection spread before the nurses' arrival at the hospital.

The US, the UN and the European Union have firmly condemned the verdicts, but Colonel Gaddafi has so far refused to release the nurses, who are due to be executed by firing squad.

His demand for a compensation equal to that paid by Libya to the families of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has been rejected by Bulgaria on the grounds that it would be tantamount to acknowledging the nurses' guilt.