EU, Turkey to sign Gas pipeline deal

Several European Union countries and Turkey will sign on July 13 an inter-governmental agreement on a 3,300-kilometer-long gas pipeline that will allow to pump gas from the Caspian region to Austria bypassing Russia.

Authorities of the European Commission (EC) invited to the signing ceremony confirmed the deal will be subscribed by Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. To date the contents of the agreement have not been revealed, according to a EU spokesman, but claimed it will be "based on the principles of mutual solidarity, mutual equality and interdependence.

It is still not known if the agreement will include a clause that allows Turkey to use 16 percent of the gas. The 4.6 million euros pipeline will be laid down starting next year. Gas pumping is scheduled to begin in 2013.

Libya Calls On Arab League to Cut Ties With Bulgaria

Libya has called on the Arab League to review its ties with Bulgaria after it pardoned six medical workers that Libya had jailed for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV.

The workers, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, had twice been sentenced to death in Libya for infecting some 426 children with the AIDS virus in the late 1990s. The case has been widely denounced abroad amid allegations the six were tortured into making false confessions.

Libya commuted their sentences to life in prison and allowed them to fly to Bulgaria last Tuesday, under a deal sponsored by France allowing the six medical worker to serve their sentences at home.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the medical workers should have been detained upon arrival in Bulgaria last week and not freed in a "celebratory and illegal manner."

The five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were freed as soon as they arrived in Bulgaria, following the deal struck between the European Union and Tripoli that ended their eight-year imprisonment. Libya's Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi said Libya had kept their part of their agreement, but Bulgaria did not.

Voice of America

EU to push for six medics' speedy transfer from Libya

The European Union, along with the US, has called on Libya to transfer five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to its territory, after the Libyan High Judicial Council converted their death penalty into life imprisonment on Tuesday night (17 July).

"The fact that the High Judicial Council did not uphold the death sentence is a first relief", the European Commission president Jose Barroso said. "However, our objective is a solution which allows for the departure of the Bulgarian and Palestinian medical personnel from Libya and their transfer to the EU as soon as possible", he added.

According to Bulgaria's foreign minister Ivailo Kalfin, negotiations on the transfer of the medics will get under way later today (18 July). "This decision is a big step in the right direction... For us the case will end once they come back to Bulgaria," he was cited as saying by the BBC.

Tripoli, for its part, has already indicated it was willing to consider the medics' return to Bulgaria based on a 1984 extradition deal. "There is a legal co-operation agreement between Libya and Bulgaria and we don't mind that the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor benefit from it," Libya's foreign minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam told the AP.

The six medics have been jailed in Libya since 1999, after an outbreak of HIV among children at a Benghazi hospital. In 2004, they were convicted and sentenced to death for intentionally starting the epidemic.

Tuesday's decision by the Libyan panel comes after a deal with victims' families – something orchestrated by the Gaddafi Foundation, led by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son. Families signed a declaration, claiming they no longer insist on the death penalty, and in return received payments – one million dollars each. "

"This is indeed good news", EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero–Waldner said on Tuesday (17 July), following the announcement. She also stressed the bloc would "stand by [its] commitments to continue assisting the children, their families and the Benghazi hospital in fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS".