Brussels/Rabat, 12/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - Maghreb countries have sided with Libya in the affair involving Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of voluntarily infecting children in the Benghazi hospital with the AIDS virus. The Council of Union Foreign Affairs Ministers from the Arab Maghreb (UMA, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania) meeting on Saturday 10 February in Rabat (according to a Moroccan press agency) expressed “its concern at the international campaign by the media and European associations against the Libyan legal system”. This was a reference to the international protest campaign launched at an institutional level by eminent EU figures and member states, following confirmation of the death sentence of the nurses and doctor. Maghreb ministers emphasise that this campaign, “is not based on any legal or moral foundation”. They also call on, “all the different parties, particularly the Europeans” to “adopt a positive attitude vis-à-vis this affair in its human and human rights dimension and avoid any politicisation”. They also call for help in attenuating the impact of this tragedy through the provision of medicines and car for the children (who are still alive) and help, “contribute to the compensation of the victims' families, instead of challenging the Libyan legal system”. (fb)