SOFIA, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy received a hero's welcome in Bulgaria Thursday for his controversial role in securing the release of six Bulgarian medics jailed in a high-profile Libyan AIDS case.
"Thank you from all our hearts, president, you are our saviour," the medics wrote in a letter they gave to Sarkozy upon meeting him.
The moving meeting was only clouded by the absence of Sarkozy's wife, Cecilia, whose role in the liberation sparked a storm of criticism in France.
Sarkozy received the country's highest state honour, the "Stara planina" medal, for his role in securing the release of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor.
Sarkozy told a Bulgarian newspaper that his wife was "hurt by the controversy that followed her intervention" and "chose to be as discreet as possible".
The French president has himself come under fire for involving his wife in the case and a parliamentary inquiry has been launched to determine whether the French government traded arms and nuclear cooperation with Tripoli in exchange for the nurses' release.
The six medics expressed their regret earlier in the press at not being able to meet Cecilia Sarkozy again, but they presented the French president with a special present for her: an icon of the Virgin Mary.
"May God protect her the way she protected us," nurse Valya Chervenyashka said, her eyes brimming with tears.
The six medics spent eight and a half years in prison and were sentenced to death after being found guilty of infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in the northeastern city of Benghazi.
They always maintained their innocence and their case sparked an international outcry. International health experts blamed the AIDS epidemic on poor hospital hygiene.
The medics finally returned home aboard the French presidential plane on July 24 after a brief trip to Libya by Cecilia Sarkozy and EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Critics said Sarkozy hijacked the success of months of painstaking EU-led negotiations and used his wife to claim the glory for himself.
"You suffered a lot and France wishes you to be very happy now, recover, think about the future and forget the nightmare. We love you," Nicolas Sarkozy told the medics.
He praised his wife's role as "decisive".
"Her intervention was remarkable in every way and certainly decisive but at the same time I also want to pay homage to Ferrero-Waldner and to (European Commission President Jose Manuel) Barroso," the French president said.
"One decisive thing during Cecilia's first trip to Libya was that she was not contented with only meeting the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor but that she also went to Benghazi and took to heart the pain of the families of the AIDS-infected children," he added.
Sarkozy gave away no sign of the controversy during his visit, blowing kisses to the crowds in the Bulgarian capital and breaking protocol to shake hands with people who came to greet him during the welcoming ceremony, which featured a special honorary guard.
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