French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Friday expressed his country's support for the five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya.

"Their suffering should be put soonest to an end," Villepin said at a joint news conference with his Bulgarian counterpart, Sergei Stanishev.

"We are confident that the Bulgarian nurses are not responsible for this problem," Villepin said, and added that international experts had proved this.

He said France would propose the issue for discussion at an upcoming meeting of EU foreign ministers, AP news agency reported.

"France and the European Union have one joint responsibility — to make justice prevail and stop this terrible misunderstanding," Villepin said.

Stanishev said the case presented a problem not only between Bulgaria and Libya, but was "turning into a problem between the European Union and Libya."

The Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor have been in a Libyan prison since February 1999, accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV at a hospital in Benghazi.

Bulgaria and European officials have repeatedly blamed the infections on unhygienic practices at the hospital, and accuse Libya of making the medical workers scapegoats

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