Czechs, Qatar paid into HIV children fund - Libya
Source: Reuters
(Adds detail, adds Libyan appeal to Arab league) TRIPOLI, July 28 (Reuters) - The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Qatar and Bulgaria contributed to an international fund to treat hundreds of children who contracted HIV at a Libyan hospital and support their families, Libya said on Saturday. "I thank Qatar for its role in the nurses' case. European countries including Bulgaria and the Czech Republic contributed to the fund for the infected children," Libyan Prime Minister al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi told reporters in Tripoli. "France pledged to equip Benghazi hospital and provide trained personnel for five years. It also agreed to train some 50 Libyan doctors." The Benghazi International Fund has already given $1 million to each of the families of the infected child under a deal that enabled death sentences to be commuted on six foreign medics convicted on charges of deliberately contaminating the children. The payout was financed by a $460 million loan to the fund made by an official Libyan development institution that is due to be repaid as and when donors make resources available. In a subsequent deal, the European Union promised closer ties with Libya in exchange for custody of the medics. They were flown this week to Bulgaria where they were immediately pardoned and released by the new EU member country's president. The fund will also finance the medical treatment of the children and a series of improvements to the Libyan health case system. It has pledges of financial and in-kind contributions for all the goals it is pursuing worth about $477 million. Libya's al-Mahmoudi said the fund had already received that amount, allowing it to pay for assistance to the families and what he called "repair of the damage". "We have all the documents to indicate the transfer of this sum of money to the Benghazi fund," he said, without specifying whether the money covered the payout to the families or the programme of treatment and medical facility upgrades. DEBT WRITE-OFF? Bulgaria said it contributed to the fund through a Bulgarian non-governmental organisation in which private Bulgarian and foreign companies took part, but that the sums given so far were symbolic compared with what was paid to the families. "One of the options for Bulgaria's contribution to the fund is forgiving the Libyan debt," Deputy Foreign Minister Feim Chaushev told Reuters. "We are to decide on that option. We are discussing other options as well such as technical assistance." Jailed since 1999, the six medics were twice condemned to death after trials that drew sharp international condemnation. The medical workers said they were innocent and that earlier confessions of guilt were extracted from them using torture. After Bulgaria released them, victims' families back in Libya condemned what they called Bulgaria's "recklessness" and demanded the medical workers be re-arrested by Interpol. Libya then weighed in, saying the pardon had violated earlier accords with Bulgaria. On Saturday it said it had called on Arab League countries to review ties with Bulgaria. "Yes, we submitted a memorandum to the Arab League and we demanded a review of the Arab position with regard to Bulgaria," Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam said. The league's members are due to meet on Monday. Bulgarian officials insisted the pardon was legal and urged Libya to understand that the resolution to the nurses crisis was in everyone's interest. "The most important thing is to restore our relations with Libya because in the last eight years they have stalled in the medics' case," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin told Darik radio earlier on Saturday. The release of the medics removed an obstacle to Libya's efforts to end three decades of diplomatic isolation, but Libya's prime minister said the matter would not be forgotten. "We will keep following this subject," al-Mahmoudi said. "We will take the right procedures which serve the interests of our country."(Additional reporting by Kremena Miteva in Sofia)
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