France has signed a nuclear reactor deal with Libya, during a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The French world nuclear leader Areva will build a nuclear reactor which will desalinate sea water.

"The objective is to cooperate so as to work on the installation in Libya of a nuclear reactor to supply drinking water from desalinated sea water," Claude Gueant, the secretary general at the French presidential palace, told Reuters. "As to what concerns nuclear stations, there aren't 50 builders in France. There's only one, that's Areva," he said.

Areva (real name S.A. des Participations du Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique) is the only company in the world with a presence in each industrial activity linked to nuclear energy: mining, chemistry, enrichment, combustibles, services, engineering, nuclear propulsion and reactors, treatment, recycling, stabilization, and dismantling.

"If we dare to say that civilian nuclear energy is reserved for the northern coast of the Mediterranean and that the Arab world is not responsible enough for nuclear energy, then we are humiliating them and paving the way for a war of civilizations," Sarkozy told reporters in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, Libya has issued a protest for the presidential pardon of the six medical workers. The workers, released from Libya to continue their life sentences in Bulgaria, have been immediately pardoned by the Bulgarian president. "There are no legal problems with the status of the medics that returned from Libya," Prosecutor General Boris Velchev told BTA.

The workers are fighting back, saying they are seeking prosecution of the Libyan police officers who tortured them during interrogations in 1999. They allege they were subject to coercion, torture and threats in order to extract false confessions.