Tripoli

The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of contaminating hundreds of Libyan children with Aids reopened on Tuesday with the judge calling for the process to be speeded up. Judge Mahmud al-Huweissa adjourned the trial to June 20 after a brief session.

Libya’s Supreme Court on Sunday ordered a retrial for five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for their alleged role in infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. The decision overturned death sentences that would have been carried out by firing squad.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said on Friday that his country seeks ”friendship” with the United States and that the time for confrontation with the superpower has passed, according to comments aired on official television. ”America equally needs us and its oil companies can now work in Libya,” Gadaffi said.

Libya is ready to restore diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia that were severed after Riyadh accused Tripoli of a plot to assassinate King Abdullah, then crown prince of the oil-rich kingdom. Last month, five Libyans were pardoned by Abdullah shortly after he became monarch on the death of his half-brother King Fahd.

The two main rebel movements in Sudan’s conflict-ridden western Darfur region have signed an agreement to stop all acts of enmities and friction between their supporters to maintain unity in the strife-torn province. The agreement was signed late on Sunday in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The parents of HIV-infected children tried to storm a court on Tuesday when a judge announced the postponement of a ruling on the death sentence appeal of six medics, including five Bulgarians and a Palestinian, convicted of infecting 400 children with the virus that causes HIV/Aids.

Libya said it would drop a case against five Bulgarian nurses condemned to death on charges of spreading HIV/Aids if Sofia paid out 10-million euros for every child infected with the virus at a Libyan hospital. The Bulgarian government has rejected the proposal, saying it would not pay compensation because it did not believe the nurses were guilty.

British Foreign Office minister Baroness Simons held talks with Libyan officials on boosting ties between London and Tripoli, the official Libyan news agency Jana said on Friday. At a meeting on Thursday, Simons handed over a message from Prime Minister Tony Blair for Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi.

Libya’s oil reserves total 47-billion barrels and could reach significantly higher levels, said Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem on Wednesday. Until now, Tripoli has said its proven oil reserves stood at 36-billion barrels. He added that investment projects are open to all potential investors, adding that Libya would not give preference to companies from any particular country.

Libya signed a deal in Tripoli on Friday to pay -million in compensation to mainly German victims of a Berlin nightclub bombing 18 years ago, an AFP correspondent said. The 1986 bombing at the La Belle discotheque in then West Berlin killed two American GIs and a Turkish woman and wounded more than 250 people.

Libyans on Wednesday marked the 35th anniversary of Moammar Gadaffi’s seizure of power, with the familiar posters of their mercurial leader, who has shed his long-held pariah status, adorning city streets. On Tuesday evening, their leader delivered one of his set-piece speeches, relayed live by state media.

Moammar Gaddafi expressed regret on Sunday that former United States President Ronald Reagan died without ever standing trial for 1986 air strikes he ordered that killed the Libyan leader’s adopted daughter and 36 other people. Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air raid in response to a discotheque bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Gaddafi that killed two US soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 people.

The fall of Saddam Hussein has allowed terrorism, and notably Islamic extremism like that of Osama bin Laden, to flourish in Iraq, Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said, describing terror as a threat to the security of the whole world. ”Saddam’s fall has not brought terrorism to an end,” Gadaffi said in a televised speech on Wednesday.

Libya’s prime minister said his country wants to be rewarded for opening up to nuclear inspections and stressed that the United States must lift sanctions by May 12 or his government won’t have to pay -million to each family of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing victims, according to an interview published on Friday.

A Libyan newspaper, banned for two weeks for attacking Lebanese Shiite parties and some Arab governments, reappeared on newsstands on Monday with a new editor. Az-Zahf Al-Akhdar, an ideological journal of the Revolutionary Committees, was banned on October 13 for publishing several articles attacking the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament and leader of the Shiite Amal party

Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi, once a devoted and energetic champion of Arab unity, announced this weekend his definitive separation from the Arabs, whom he heavily criticised. Standing before a group of women, in a Mediterranean villa in
Syrte about 500 kilometres east of Tripoli, Gadaffi declared himself more than ever African, claiming to be ”forever beyond nationalism and Arab unity.”

Libya firmly denied on Saturday that its troops have entered the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in support of rebel groups, following a protest by the DRC to the UN Security Council.

Twelve people were killed and 56 were missing early on Sunday after a ship smuggling over 100 African citizens to Europe sank off the Libyan coast.

Libyan leader Moammer Gaddafi and former South African president and Nobel peace prize winner Nelson Mandela spoke by phone on Saturday on the possible US military strike on Iraq.