Bulgaria and Libya have agreed to set up a special fund for AIDS-infected children in the Libyan city of Benghazi, where five Bulgarian nurses have been sentenced to death for allegedly spreading the deadly disease, Bulgaria's foreign ministry said on Friday.

The fund was agreed on in talks Wednesday and Thursday in Tripoli which also included representatives of the European Commission, the United States and Britain, the ministry said in a statement.

The move was part of international efforts to secure the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.

The six medics were imprisoned in 1999 in Libya for allegedly injecting 426 children with HIV-tainted blood and were sentenced to death in 2004.

At least 50 of the infected children have reportedly died, heightening the pressure on Libya's government to carry out the sentences. Angry families of the Libyan victims have been waging protests wanting retribution.

However, Bulgaria and its allies, the European Union and the United States, have condemned the verdicts, saying the Libyan court ignored a testimony from AIDS experts that the epidemic started before the nurses arrived in the city and was probably caused by poor hygiene.

Source: Xinhua