TRUDY RUBIN Libya hasn't changed roguish ways

Have you ever read a news story so bizarre you had to blink your eyes to believe it?
Such is the story of five Bulgarian nurses (and one Palestinian doctor) who are under a death sentence in a Libyan jail, accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus. Libya's Supreme Court is set to hear their final appeal on Nov. 15; they could face a firing squad if the appeal is rejected. They have already spent seven years in prison.
This story exemplifies the tendency in the Arab world to hatch wild conspiracy theories to explain difficult problems. The tendency is hardly unique to Arab societies, but they produce more elaborate theories more often than any other society I've encountered.
Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi negotiated a deal with the United States and our European allies to end his nuclear weapons program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions and Libya's pariah status. But the nurses' plight suggests Libya isn't ready to be welcomed back into the international community.
The nurses are clearly not guilty. They traveled to Libya in the 1990s to find work at a time when the Bulgarian economy was in tatters. In 1999, an AIDS epidemic infected around 420 Libyan children, and the Libyans conveniently arrested the foreign medical workers. The women were tortured in an effort to extract confessions.
International AIDS experts and a World Health Organization team that visited Libya concluded the AIDS virus was being spread by unsanitary hospital practices. The experts included Luc Montagnier, the doctor who discovered the AIDS virus and who was invited to Libya by Gadhafi's son, Seif El-Islam (a more modern man than his father). Montagnier found some of the children were infected before the nurses even arrived.
So why were the nurses charged? Clearly Libyan officials were trying to deflect public outrage over the infecting of children.
Arab audiences
To further rouse Libyan wrath against the foreign medical workers, the indictment charged them with working for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service. That charge has been dropped. Perhaps it became an embarrassment after Libya concluded its deal with the Bush administration. But the charge probably still resonates with Arab audiences that believe Israeli agents carried out the World Trade Center bombings.
The European Commission has protested the nurses' case, and President Bush made a strong statement when he met with Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov on Monday in the White House. "The position of the United States government is the nurses ought to be freed. We have made our position known to the Libyan government," Bush said.
Are such protests strong enough to save the nurses when Libya's oil fields beckon Western investors?
I asked Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin in a telephone interview what he thought must be done.
"We appreciate the U.S. interest, which was declared by President Bush. I'm sure they [the Bush administration] will follow the case closely," Kalfin said.
"Libya should take into account all the evidence which shows that the Bulgarian nurses are not guilty."
Kalfin noted that the case had become far more important than a bilateral dispute. "It is of interest to many governments and nongovernmental organizations. This case is not helping at all Libya's relations with the rest of the world. This case should be settled in a positive way."
What won't work, the minister insisted, is Libya's suggestion that Bulgaria pay blood money to the families of the children, which could lead to the dismissal of the case under Islamic law.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," Kalfin said. "You pay blood money if you are guilty." He said the tragedy that has befallen the children must be separated out from the trial of the nurses.
Toward this end, the European Union has set up a plan to help treat Libyan AIDS victims, in which Bulgaria is participating. "The idea is to create the capacity in Libya to cure the children," Kalfin says. "We really are concerned with the tragedy of the Libyan children. But this is a humanitarian issue. The issue of the nurses is a question of justice and human rights."
No question about that. How can Western nations do business with a country where foreign visitors risk execution based on conspiracy theories that defy facts and international norms?
X Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.