Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin said during a working meeting with honorary consuls of Bulgaria which opened on Tuesday in Sofia that Bulgaria will spare no effort to complete the entire legal procedure in Libya in the AIDS case involving the five Bulgarian nurses.

Kalfin noted that many research studies have shown the absolute groundlessness of the assumption of guilt of the nurses and described the second death sentence against them as totally incomprehensible in the context of scientific facts.

Kalfin expressed concern with the speech of the Libyan leader at the end of 2006 who, in his words, directly linked the AIDS case with the case of the Pan Am plane bombing over Lockerbie. For Bulgaria this is totally unacceptable. This linkage takes the AIDS case outside its legal environment and makes it into a political one, Kalfin said.

Kalfin noted that the world should focus its attention on the Libyan AIDS case as, according to him, it questions basic human rights with an extremely heavy sentence.

We are again left with the hope that the [Libyan] court will decide to admit all these apparent facts, said Kalfin, adding that Bulgaria will rely much on the assistance of the international community, its partners and friends, including the support of the honorary consuls.

During the meeting Kalfin also set out the political and economic environment in Bulgaria and the country's foreign policy priorities. Special note was made of the hight Gross Domestic Product growth which exceeds 6 per cent, the inflation rate which is around 6 per cent and decreasing unemployment which is now below 9 per cent. Kalfin stressed the need to improve living standards in Bulgaria.

Among Bulgaria's foreign policy priorities the Foreign Minister singled out the country's active participation in the international organizations, its ties with the United States and Russia, regional cooperation, human rights protection, the energy policy. Kalfin said that Bulgaria will add value to the EU, noting that one of the huge compromises for the country's accession to the EU is the decommissioning of power units 3 and 4 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which, as he put it, "was prompted by no substantial technological reasons".

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