President Sarkozy will meet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya today as he seeks to reap political, economic and diplomatic benefits from his role in the medical workers’ release.

The French President, who is claiming credit for ending their eight-year ordeal, will want to enhance the international stature he has acquired since his election in May. He is also hoping to foster a special relationship with Libya that would pave the way for lucrative contracts for French companies with the oil-rich African state.

Having earned his Super-Sarko nickname after an active first two and a half months in office, he moved swiftly to capitalise on what is being portrayed in France as his latest triumph. “I promised to obtain the liberation of these women and that man and we have obtained it,” he said, while his advisers told journalists that he had been up all night finalising the deal.

President Sarkozy said that he had intervened out of compassion and a sense of duty that came from being at the head of a country claiming to be the birthplace of human rights. “The nurses, in my heart, were French,” he said. “They were French because they were unjustly accused and because they suffered and because we had to get them out of there.” He paid tribute to his wife, Cécilia, who visited Tripoli twice before flying the five nurses and the doctor to Sofia in the presidency’s Airbus 317. “Cécilia did a quite remarkable job,” he said.

Brushing aside criticism over her foray into diplomacy, Mr Sarkozy added: “I had one of the nurses on the phone from Sofia this morning. She said she was the happiest woman in the world. She didn’t ask, ‘What status does your wife have?’.”

French government advisers countered accusations that France had stepped into negotiations at the last minute to seize the glory after years of spadework by the European Commission, Britain and Germany. “The situation was blocked before Mr Sarkozy’s election,” said his spokesman. “There has undoubtedly been an acceleration since he became involved.”

Paris was less forthcoming about the deal that secured the release of the medics. President Sarkozy said that neither the European Union nor France had contributed “one euro” to the $400 million (£194 million) compensation fund for victims’ families. He implicitly confirmed reports that the fund was financed largely by the Emir of Qatar, whom he thanked for his “humanitarian gesture”.

French officials also suggested that Paris would come up with money to renovate Benghazi hospital, where the children were infected with the Aids virus, and other infrastructure projects believed to form part of the deal between Tripoli and the EU.

Sources in Paris also suggested that President Sarkozy is seeking business in Libya, an economy that is growing at 8 per cent a year, notably a contract to sell France’s Rafale fighter aircraft.

Officials in Tripoli say that he will sign bilateral agreements on security, energy, education, immigration, health and scientific research during his visit today. And French antinuclear campaigners said that he was planning to offer Libya nuclear technology as compensation for releasing the nurses and doctor, which he denied.

There appears to be no limit to Sarko-mania. Rama Yade, the French Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said that Paris would now press for the liberation of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner. “France, as the cradle of human rights, has a duty more than any other country to defend fundamental rights,” she said, adding that she was “happy to see that, in this field, France is back.”

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