Libya has threatened to cut all forms of co-operation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) if Irina Bokova, the Bulgarian elected to head the organisation, is confirmed as the Unesco new director general on October 15 2009, RIA Novosti said.
 
"Libya does not agree with the election of a Bulgarian citizen to the post of the Unesco director general and is planning to stop all co-operation with this organisation and pull out from all Unesco committees," RIA Novosti quoted Abdelkebir Fakhri, head of the Libyan General People's committee on education and scientific research as being reported as saying by Libya's JANA news agency.
 
According to RIA Novosti, Libya’s decision has to do with the case of the six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor who were given life sentences by a Libyan court for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
 
Twice sentenced to death by Libyan courts for the deliberate infection of hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, charges denied by the medics and rejected by Bulgaria and several other countries, multilaterals, medical experts and human rights organisations, on July 17 2007 the medics' sentences were commuted by the Libyan supreme judicial council, a political body, to life imprisonment.
 
After the families of the Libyan children accepted financial settlements reportedly worth $1 million for each child, negotiations began to bring the medics home. Bulgaria and Libya have a convict exchange agreement signed in the 1980s.
 
After spending eight years in jail in Libya, the medics were brought by a French presidential aircraft to Sofia on July 24 2007, where they were pardoned by President Georgi Purvanov, amid protests by both Libya and the Arab League.  
 
At the time, Seif al Islam, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddaffi, said that the agreement on the release of the medics had removed all obstacles to normalisation of relations between Libya and the European Union.
 
Now the issue, according to RIA Novosti, has hit Bokova's election as Unesco head.
 
Bokova, Bulgaria's representative to Unesco and ambassador in Paris, won on September 22 the final round of voting to become the next head of the organisation and is to take office officially on October 23 after her nomination is put to the vote at the Unesco general conference on October 15. She will be the first woman and first person from South Eastern Europe to head the organisation.  
 
During the election process, she defeated Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni in the fifth round, gathering 31 votes in favour against Hosni's 27 in the Unesco council, despite Arab countries support for Hosni
 
In the end, Hosni's bid was hindered by anti-Semitic remarks that he made in 2008 and accusations of heavy-handed lobbying against Hosni were bandied about in Unesco's headquarters in Paris