Libya's Supreme Court has confirmed the death penalty against six foreign medics convicted of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus, but a reprieve may still be possible in the case that has dragged on for eight years.[AFP]

The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor were not in court for the verdict, announced the day after a compensation deal was reached with the children's families that could see the death sentences commuted to prison terms.

"In the name of the people, the court has decided not to accept the defendants' appeal and confirms the death penalty against them," chief judge Fathi Dahan said.

Libya's top legal body is due to meet next week to examine the compensation deal negotiated by the Kadhafi Foundation, a charitable body headed by the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

"The Supreme Judicial Council is going to meet on Monday and it will be up to this body to cancel or commute the verdict pronounced today by the supreme court," foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told reporters.

Nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Nasya Nenova, Valya Cherveniashka, Valentina Siropulo and Kristiana Valcheva and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Juma Hajuj -- who now has Bulgarian nationality -- have been behind bars since February 1999 but have always protested their innocence.

They were convicted of infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in the Mediterranean city of Benghazi and sentenced to death in May 2004. Fifty-six of the children have since died.

But foreign health experts have cited poor hygiene as the probable cause of the epidemic in Benghazi, Libya's second city.

Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, expressed sorrow over the verdict and appealed for clemency.

"We will continue our efforts together with our European and other international partners towards reaching a final agreement and for a decision of the Supreme Judicial Council which will be positive for our medical workers," Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said.

Bulgarian lawyers for the nurses condemned the verdict.

"I am devastated. Justice was not done," lawyer Hari Haralambiev told Bulgarian national radio by telephone from Tripoli.

"Libyan justice wrote a sad and shameful page in its book. It is obvious now that Libyan justice was exploited for reaching other goals," added the Bulgarian coordinator of the defence Trayan Markovski.

Salah Abdessalem, director of the Kadhafi Foundation run by Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam had said on Tuesday that a compromise acceptable to the children's families had been reached.

A representative of the victims' families had said the compromise deal would see the death penalty commuted to jail terms, which could be served in the medics' country of origin, as Libya and Bulgaria have an extradition treaty.

Shalgham said an agreement had been reached but Bulgaria's foreign ministry said it could not yet confirm the deal.

A special fund for the AIDS victims was set up by Libya and Bulgaria in 2005 under the aegis of the EU.

Shalgham said commitments to the fund had come from "certain European countries and charitable organisations, and from the Libyan state."

He refused to reveal how much money was already in the fund, except to say it ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."

Omar al-Mesmari, the father of a sick child, told AFP that families were ready to accept the agreement.

"All that counts for us is the health of our children," he said. "If we do not accept the agreement, the Europeans will stop our children from going to their institutions for treatment."

Hundreds of Libyan children infected with HIV/AIDS are currently being treated at various hospitals across Europe.

US President George W. Bush had urged Kadhafi in a letter delivered on Monday to help in the dispute, telling him that the case and lingering issues tied to the 1989 Lockerbie bombing needed his attention.

The six medics still face defamation charges brought by a senior police officer after being acquitted in May on similar charges.

The cases arise from claims that the medics "confessions" in the AIDS trial were forced from them under torture, including beatings, electric shocks and being threatened with dogs.