Libya was using the more than 400 children infected with HIV in the town of Benghazi as a “high-level game of international relations,” The Observer said.

Libya claimed that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian medic deliberately infected with HIV 426 children in 1999. The six have been imprisoned ever since.

In 2003 they were sentenced to death by firing squad but Libya's Supreme Court ordered re-trial. The court in Tripoli is expected to pronounce the final verdicts on December 19 2006. Most analysts expect confirmation of the previous death sentences.

International scientists disputed the evidence presented to the court as groundless and prepared by 'pseudo experts.' They launched unprecedented campaign in favour of the six, The Observer said.

Suspicions raised that European countries and the US stood away from the case because of 'strategic and economic reasons,' the report said.

The Observers quoted Libyan experts as saying that Libya's leader Muamar Gadaffi was using the children to negotiate with the Western countries on “contracts for oil, arms and aircraft and diplomatic relations in the Middle East.”

Gadaffi was also displeased with Libya's obligation to pay compensation to the families of the  1988 Lockerbie bombing victims, The Observer said.

Libya already asked Bulgaria to pay 2.7 billion euro compensation to the families of the HIV infected children. The sum is exactly the same as the one Libya had to pay for the Lockerbie bombing.