Plane with Bulgarian medics to land in Sofia by Tuesday: official

SOFIA (AFP) - A plane bringing home the Bulgarian medics given life sentences in Libya is expected to land in Sofia at 9:45 am local time (6:45 GMT), the foreign ministry announced Tuesday.

"The plane has left the airport in Tripoli and is expected to land in Sofia at 9:45 am," foreign ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev told AFP.

"This is the news that Bulgaria has waited for for over eight years now and we are all waiting for them to arrive," he added.

Tsanchev said the five Bulgarian nurses, a Palestinian doctor with Bulgarian nationality and another Bulgarian doctor, who was initially detained with the six, then acquitted but not allowed to leave Libya, were on board the French presidential plane.

France's first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner were also travelling with the medical workers, he added.

The office of the French President also confirmed the news from Paris.

"The aircraft of the French republic has just taken off from Libya for Sofia carrying Mrs. Cecilia Sarkozy, Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Mr. Claude Gueant, the nurses and the Palestinian doctor," a statement said.

The Darik radio meanwhile reported that "tremendous euphoria" has come on Sofia airport, where relatives of the five nurses were awaiting their arrival since early Tuesday morning.

"Words are unnecessary... I will only hug her," a moved Ivaylo Nikolchovski, son of nurse Snezhana Dimitrova, told Darik in a first reaction.

The European Union, backed by France's first lady Cecilia Sarkozy, had pushed on Monday for an end to the eight-year ordeal of the six foreign medics jailed for life for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria requested their transfer from Libya to serve their sentences at home on the basis of a prisoner exchange treaty Tripoli and Sofia signed in 1984.

But in "tough talks" held Monday, Libya set further conditions for the release of the six medics, including EU money for transport projects.