U.S., EU near deal on nurses' release

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The United States and the European Union are in the final stages of negotiating a deal with Libya to free five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for infecting children with HIV, U.S. and European officials said yesterday.

The agreement, which is seen as a key to ending Tripoli's decades-long international isolation, would lead to legislation scrapping the death penalty and would include foreign "humanitarian assistance" for the North African country, the officials said.

"The United States, the EU and Bulgaria have been working together with Libya to come up with the best resolution to this tragedy," said the Bulgarian ambassador to Washington, Elena Poptodorova.

A senior State Department official said the United States has been "engaged" with the Libyan government on the issue of capital punishment. A new law ending the practice would provide Col. Moammar Gadhafi's government with a face-saving way out of the affair.

The nurses, as well as a Palestinian doctor, were convicted last year of conspiring to infect more than 400 children with HIV, which causes AIDS, at a hospital in the city of Benghazi in the late 1990s.

At least 40 have died, causing a huge public outcry and mass demonstrations in Libya demanding the nurses' executions.

Libya viewed the incident as an international plot involving the CIA and Israel's foreign intelligence agency Mossad.

The accused insist they are innocent and their confessions were the result of torture.

Several respected international medical specialists have challenged Tripoli's claims, saying the infections most likely were caused by unsanitary conditions in the hospital.

President Bush said after a meeting with Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov at the White House two weeks ago that there was no evidence the nurses were guilty and demanded their immediate release.