(SOFIA) - Bulgaria celebrated Wednesday the return of six medics freed from life sentences in Libya and heaped praise on French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and EU official Benita Ferrero-Waldner for securing their release.

"They brought the nurses home!" Bulgaria's largest circulation daily Trud trumpeted.

Newspapers tripped over themselves to pay tribute to the two women who took part in the final negotiations in Tripoli, praising the "discreet charm" of Sarkozy and describing Ferrero-Waldner, the EU's External Affairs Commissioner, as a "smile-toting diplomatic rebel".

In a television interview on Wednesday, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin revealed how Ferrero-Waldner had threatened to walk out of the talks in the early hours of Tuesday morning unless Libya compromised.

"While Benita led the negotiations, Cecilia used political pressure," Kalfin said.

Libya finally freed the five Bulgarian nurses and one doctor on Tuesday morning, ending an eight-year ordeal that had twice seen them sentenced to death for allegedly infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood in a Libyan hospital.

All six had repeatedly protested their innocence, amid testimony by internationally respected AIDS researchers that poor hygiene was to blame.

"After eight years of diplomacy, it was a bit of French adventurism and a pinch of free spirit that helped win the return of our medics home," Trud wrote in a full-page profile of Sarkozy.

Ferrero-Waldner suggested that she had had to bargain hard for the medics' release. Asked about the late-night talks in Tripoli after her return to Brussels, she told the press: "Have you ever been shopping in an Arab country?"

But she added: "If you saw the joy of all the Bulgarian people on the television today, that was my personal reward."

The freed nurses also were fulsome in their praise.

"Sarkozy is someone you just cannot help trusting," said 54-year-old nurse Snezhana Dimitrova.

"She told us in a previous visit to Libya this month 'I will take you to Bulgaria' and she came back to do it.

"I want to forget the horror we lived through, I do not want to talk about it, I even spared my family the details about what we really went through," she added.

A tearful Valentina Siropulo, 48, who kept embracing Ferrero-Waldner at the airport, told Bulgarian national radio: "They were people who understood that our condition was unstable. They behaved really kindly... And here we are in Bulgaria now."

The six medical workers, who said their confessions were extracted under torture, were undergoing complete medical checks on Wednesday. Doctors said they feared the nurses might collapse from psychological pressure and intense emotions after their arrival.

They were expected to hold a press conference at 3:00 pm (1200 GMT).

"The only thing that kept me alive during all these years, (through) the painful, terrible tortures, the uncertainty, the death sentences, was the belief I cherished in my heart, in my soul, that we are innocent," Siropulo said.

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