Dina Ezzat reports on the Arab reaction to the Libyan boycott demand over the saga of the Bulgarian nurses A low-key call for non-politicisation of a human tragedy is all that Tripoli got out of the Arab League in return for its demand for a boycott of relations with Sofia in protest of the decision of the Bulgarian president to acquit a group of Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-Bulgarian doctor who were handed over to him after eight years in Libyan custody over charges of deliberately infecting a group of Libyan children with the HIV/AIDS virus as a part of a wide medical experimentation process. The resolution adopted by the Arab Council of Foreign Ministers during an extraordinary meeting held on 30 July, ostensibly to debate the future of the Arab- Israeli peace process, was short in length and unmistakable in the message it delivered to Libya rather than to Bulgaria. Consensus was achieved after limited deliberation under the title of "the latest developments of the file of the [Libyan] Children infected with the virus of HIV/ AIDS", the resolution expressing "sympathy" with the state of the children, "dismay" for the politicisation of a human tragedy, "appreciation" for all efforts involved in the settlement of the file and demanding that Bulgaria fully honour the terms of agreement reached with its Libyan counterpart to conclude this sad saga. Libya, whose foreign minister absented himself from the one-day extraordinary meeting, got no more. Earlier in the week, the Libyan government had forwarded a note to the secretariat of the Arab League demanding that an emergency meeting be held to deliberate "the adoption of one strong position against the measures undertaken by Bulgaria" in relation to the file of the nurses. In a two-page memo from the Permanent Mission of Libya to the Arab League secretary-general, Tripoli stated that the legal agreement reached between the Al-Qaddafi Development Agency and the European Commission stipulated that the life sentence issued by a Libyan court against the nurses and doctor for the alleged charges allows for the transfer of the indicted individuals to Bulgaria and for Bulgaria to deduct the eight years that the indicted spent behind bars from the supposedly 25-year sentence. In the same memo, Tripoli contested that upon their transfer on 24 July, the indicted were granted an acquittal by the Bulgarian president in "a step that reflected lack of respect for international law and disdain for the lives and misery of close to 450 Libyan children that were infected with the virus of HIV/AIDS." This measure, on the Bulgarian side, Tripoli alleged was "insensitive to the Libyan people and families of the victims". Libya demanded that the "strong and unified position" that it expected of the Arab countries, as represented in the Arab ministerial meeting, should "include the severance of political and economic relations with Bulgaria". This stance, the memo noted, is not only demanded to express dismay over Libyan interests but also to "highlight the double standards applied by the West in cases of clashes of interests with the people of the region." The Arab ministerial meeting examined the Libyan note. It also examined a letter from the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry that alleged that in view of a legal agreement between Libya and Bulgaria, the Bulgarian authorities were entitled to decide the fate of the indicted individuals in accordance with the terms stipulated in the Bulgarian constitution. This authorises the head of state to acquit the indicted irrespective of whether or not the indictment was passed by a Bulgarian or a foreign court of law. This is not in contradiction to international law, according to the Bulgarian side. On 30 July, several Arab diplomats downplayed the importance of the Libyan demand and said that Arab countries were willing to accommodate the wish of the Libyan regime to come across as angry that the nurses and doctor were acquitted outright. However, they added that given that the Libyans never informed the Arab countries of the details of the deal, the Arab countries cannot be expected to sever relations with a member state of the European Union for no clear reason. In the words of one Arab diplomat who asked for his name to be withheld, "we all know very well that the declared text of the agreement between the Qaddafi Institution and the European Commission is not without tacit deals that we know nothing about. This is a file that Arab countries were never involved in. We intend to keep out. We just offered our moral support and this is the maximum we can do." There is a growing sense of impatience in Arab diplomatic quarters with the "unpredictable political caprices of the Libyan regime". Arab diplomats say that there is a wide consensus among almost every Arab country that Arab-foreign relations are primarily a bilateral affair for each state to conduct in accordance with its own interests and whatever collective stances that might be taken by the Arab League in support of any one member state would have to be "reasonable and sensible to the dynamics of international relations". Pragmatism and realism represent priorities for most Arab capitals, diplomats say. They add that it was pragmatism and realism that made Libya transfer the nurses and doctor to Bulgaria and that today Libya needs to pull the curtains down on this file. The nurses and the doctor involved maintained that they were innocent and were forced to admit wrong-doing under pressure -- the doctor spoke of torture -- from the Libyan authorities. An independent report conducted upon the demand of the European Union concluded that the infection of the children was simply due to poor hygiene standards in the involved hospitals that they attended for medical treatment. However, another independent report concluded upon by an independent international medical team upon the request of Libya concluded that the nature of infection of the HIV/AIDS virus could not have been caught at the same format and strength by incidental infection. The report argued a deliberate and systematic infection. The deal to transfer the nurses and doctor to Bulgaria aboard the private jet of the French president was concluded after much negotiations and mediations that included several European, especially France, and Arab, especial Qatar, interventions. The deal included the compensation of the families of the victims and extension of generous economic and technical incentives from the European Union to Libya.
