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US will offer Palestinians 500 million dollars: source
AFP, December
15, 2007
WASHINGTON, Dec
14, 2007 (AFP) - The United States will offer the moderate
Palestinian leadership more than 500 million dollars at an
international donors conference opening in Paris at the
weekend, a US official said Friday.
"The US will
make a generous contribution. The expectation would be 100
million dollars more than last year's context, in the
vicinity of 500 million plus," a government official said on
condition of anonymity.
The
administration of US President George W. Bush had asked
Congress to approve 400 million in economic support for
Palestinians in the 2007-2008 budget, which began on October
1. The amount has not been approved.
Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice will head the US delegation to the
conference aimed at supporting Palestinian reform of
political, security and economic institutions that would
underpin a future Palestinian state.
The conference,
organized by the French government, follows the launch on
November 27 in Annapolis, Maryland of the first serious
Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations in seven years.
The United
States wants to shore up Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas,
whose secular Fatah faction was driven out of the Gaza Strip
by the radical Islamist Hamas movement during heavy fighting
in June.
Listed in
Washington as a terrorist group, Hamas stunned many when it
won elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2006.
Prior to the
election win, US aid to the Palestinians amounted to about
250 million dollars per year.
Since then, the
United States has spent money bit by bit on the
Palestinians, particularly through the release of 40 million
dollars in emergency aid to Gaza residents last June.
The conference
opens Sunday and lasts through Monday. |
