European Diary:When Col Muammar Gadafy strode into the European Commission headquarters in April 2004 cheered on by 200 colourful supporters and a band of African drummers hopes were high that a new dawn was breaking for EU-Libyan relations.
The invitation by the then commission president Romano Prodi was designed to rehabilitate the African dictator in the eyes of the west, which had ostracised Gadafy after Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Scotland in 1988 by a Libyan agent. Gadafy's announcement in 2003 that he would no longer pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction was the necessary precursor to the meeting in Brussels, which offered the prospect of Libya joining the EU's fledgling neighbourhood policy.
During the meeting Gadafy, who is best known in Ireland as an arms supplier to the IRA, promised a speedy resolution to the case of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of deliberately infecting 426 Libyan children of HIV.
Prodi also hinted for the first time that Brussels might offer compensation to help pave the way for the release of the medics, who HIV experts believe were falsely accused.
Three years after Gadafy's pledge the medics finally gained their freedom last week.
After witnessing their emotional return to Bulgaria last Tuesday, external relations commissioner Benita Fererro-Waldner arrived back in Brussels clutching a draft EU-Libya partnership agreement.
The deal offers Libya trading opportunities for its agricultural products, student scholarships, help for archaeological restoration and faster access to EU entry visas.
What it does not contain are the commitments to human rights and democracy enshrined in the standard neighbourhood policy deals offered to other north African states.
Neither does the agreement reveal the amount of financial compensation to be paid to Libya to secure the release of the medics.
Fearing accusations that the EU had paid Libya a ransom, diplomats deliberately kept the financial details murky.
Asked what cash would be paid to obtain the medics' release, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: "I would like to make it clear that Europe, and France, only worked in a humanitarian and political capacity, and it was left at that."
Ferrero-Waldner also ducked a question about the price paid for the deal.
EU diplomats later conceded that they were seeking "voluntary contributions" to pay $460 million to the Libyan-controlled Benghazi International Fund to cover compensation payments already provided to the families of the infected children.
By Saturday, Libyan foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham had revealed that the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Qatar had contributed to the fund.
Sofia has also floated the possibility of writing off $54 million of Libya's debt to Bulgaria and the Republic of Ireland is one of several countries mulling over a contribution to the fund.
The payment of "blood money" to compensate the relatives of victims of murder is an established practice in Islam, whereas in the West it is considered morally dubious.
The Wall Street Journal said the episode demonstrated that Gadafy's blackmail habit was "hard to shake" and warned that "rewarding a dictator for hostage-taking is fraught with moral hazards". In its editorial on the nurses the Guardian noted that it was not the first time the Libyan leader had reaped reward from past misdeeds.
The energetic Mr Sarkozy - whose wife Cecilia helped EU negotiators clinch the deal with Gadafy - lost little time in cementing Libya's diplomatic rehabilitation on a whirlwind visit to Tripoli.
Amid a host of trade deals signed at their meeting, Sarkozy promised Gadafy a French-made nuclear reactor for Libya to desalinate water.
Already irked by the French president's diplomatic coup in intervening to free the nurses, Berlin condemned the nuclear deal as "problematic" and damaging to German interests.
"Above all, the risk of proliferation increases with every country using nuclear energy," German deputy foreign minister Gernot Erler told daily newspaper Handelsblatt.
Mr Sarkozy responded by stating that restricting access to nuclear energy from the Arab world risked "humiliating them and preparing for a clash of civilisations".
These words will have bought him friends in the Arab world at the start of a French presidency which he hopes can re-establish Paris as an international power broker.
But it is energy of another kind that experts believe is at the heart of Europe's deal with Gadafy.
Libya is one of Africa's largest oil producers and needs western investment to boost its production capacity.
Meanwhile, the EU is desperately trying to diversify its energy suppliers amid concern about its reliance on Russia and the Middle East.
"Energy diversification is now a fundamental priority for the EU, and Libya, which has reserves of up to 39 billion barrels of oil, is one crucial component of that policy," says Robin Shepherd, analyst with the think tank Chatham House.
"The Bulgarian nurses was an issue that was really holding everything back . . . it needed to be solved."
With the medics now back at home in Bulgaria, Europe is free to pursue its own economic and strategic interests with Libya. Whether it can trust the country's flamboyant dictator to keep his side of any partnership deal is another matter entirely.