Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said he was expecting a breakthrough in talks to win the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death in Libya for infecting children with HIV.

Parvanov indicated that negotiations with Tripoli to secure the medical workers' release had entered a new, more positive stage before Libya's Supreme Court was to hear an appeal on Sunday.

"I have reasons to expect a development of the negotiation process which would lead to a breakthrough, to a positive result which is expected for such a long time," Parvanov said in comments published on Saturday in the 24 Hours daily newspaper.

In a case that become a hurdle to Tripoli's efforts to improve ties with the West, the five nurses and the doctor were convicted in May 2004 of transfusing HIV-contaminated blood into 426 Libyan children at a hospital in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi and they were sentenced to death by firing squad.

At their trial in May, all the six defendants pleaded not guilty. The nurses said they are innocent and their confessions were extracted under torture.

AIDS experts have said the outbreak started before the nurses arrived and was probably caused by poor hygiene.

Sofia, Brussels and Washington have denounced the verdicts as unfair and have repeatedly pressed for the release of the six medical workers, while Libya has highlighted the tragedy of the families of the infected children.

The two sides came closer on Thursday with an agreement to set up a special fund to help the families of the 426 victims.

The fund, whose size has not been specified, was agreed on in talks on Thursday in Tripoli, which also included representatives of the European Union, the United States and Britain, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said.

Sofia agreed to the fund in Thursday's deal although it has rejected paying compensation to the families of the HIV-infected children in previous talks, saying this would be seen as admission of guilt.

Source: Xinhua