BRUSSELS, July 20 (Reuters) - The European Union held out the prospect on Friday of a quick boost to relations with Libya if the fate of six jailed foreign medics is resolved in a satisfactory way.

The 27-nation EU is asking for the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who became a Bulgarian citizen recently to be sent back to Sofia, after Libya commuted the sentences from death to life imprisonment on Tuesday. "If this process ends where we want it to end, then a reinforcement of relations with Libya is very much a possibility, and something that is going to happen," a senior EU presidency diplomat said.

The Portuguese diplomat said the EU would look to raise its relations with Libya to the same level of cooperation as with other North African states, covering trade, economic assistance, migration, cultural and political relations.

"That could happen rapidly," he said.

EU foreign ministers will discuss the issue on Monday.

After intensive diplomacy and the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the families of 460 HIV victims, Libya's High Judicial Council commuted the sentences on Tuesday, opening the way for the medics' transfer home under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.

Once they are sent to Sofia, the medics could be pardoned by the new EU member state's president.

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