Region | Libya
'Neither France nor EU paid Libya'
Neither the European Union nor France paid money to Libya for the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.
- AP
- Published: 23:05 July 24, 2007
Paris: Neither the European Union nor France paid money to Libya for the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.
However, he said Qatar mediated in yesterday's releases.
"Neither Europe nor France has made the smallest financial contribution to Libya," Sarkozy said in Paris shortly after a French plane flew the medics to Bulgaria.
First lady Cecilia Sarkozy - on her second visit to Libya - European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and chief French presidential aide Claude Gueant travelled to North African on Sunday to try to secure release of the prisoners, whose death sentences had already been commuted.
Sarkozy said a feeling of solidarity with the nurses spurred him to push for their liberation.
"The nurses, in my heart, were French," he said. "They were French because they were unjustly accused and because they suffered and because we had to get them out of there."
In response to a question about whether money was paid, Sarkozy said he wished to thank the authorities of Qatar for their "mediation and their humanitarian intervention."
"It's up to them to say if they have anything to say on the subject" of their exact role, he said, adding that he and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had judged it necessary to bring a 'friendly country' to the negotiating table.
Sarkozy due today
Sarkozy announced that he and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner would visit Libya today day to "help Libya rejoin the international community." Presidential aide Gueant explained that Sarkozy's trip to Libya had been contingent upon the medics' release.
"It is clear that this trip couldn't take place if the nurses and the doctor weren't freed and that argument carried much weight" in the delegation's discussions with the Libyan authorities, Gueant told LCI television, speaking from Bulgaria.
Libya had held the six since 1999 on charges that they infected more than 400 Libyan children with HIV.
The medics denied infecting the children and said confessions were extracted under torture.
The deal worked out by the French-EU delegation included measures to improve medical care for children with Aids in Libya, Sarkozy's office said.
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