Britain and the United States will co-host a Middle East investment conference in Bethlehem next year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday, a day after a major donors' conference in Paris.
The conference in March or April is aimed at drumming up funds for the struggling Palestinian economy, the British leader said after talks in London with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
"We're optimistic that the conference will be a success," said Brown, whose government offered 500 million dollars towards the 7.4 billion dollars pledged at the Paris conference on Monday.
Abbas, thanking Britain for its "generous support," voiced confidence in reaching an accord with the Israelis by the end of next year, as agreed at last month's landmark meeting in Annapolis, Maryland.
"I'm sure that we will reach an agreement hopefully in 2008," he told reporters at a joint press conference with Brown.
The Paris pledges were made at a one-day conference convened to agree a package of aid to stabilise the Palestinian economy and shore up peace efforts with Israel.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad had formally asked donors at the meeting for 5.6 billion dollars (3.4 billion euros) by 2010 to help fulfil his plan to develop a viable economy for a future state.
Brown welcomed the result of the donors' meeting.
"This a solid basis for progress upon which we will build. I believe that these pledges yesterday underline the international community's commitment that 2008 is a year of great opportunity," he said.
"The United Kingdom will do whatever it can to support the (peace) process," he added.
Abbas praised Britain's funding pledge. "You play a major and pivotal role in the region and your personal involvement is a source of power for us," he told Brown.
The Palestinian leader's talks in Paris and London are part of a major international effort to revive the Mideast peace process.
In Washington Tuesday the White House said US President George W. Bush is due to make his first visits to Israel and the West Bank since taking office as part of a January 8-16 Middle East peace-promoting trip.
Bush will also head to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt as part of a follow-up effort stemming from the Annapolis talks.
The gathering culminated with an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to restart stalled talks with an eye on creating an independent Palestinian state living side by side at peace with Israel by the end of 2008 -- roughly one month before Bush leaves office.
Earlier, before leaving Paris for London, Abbas expressed support for a French proposal for an international force to reinforce Palestinian security services.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Monday for a force to deploy in the Palestinian territories, "when the time comes and when the conditions are right" to "lend its support to the Palestinian security services."
For 2008 alone, the United States pledged $555 million, including $150 million in budget support. The 27-member European Union pledged $650 million. The U.S. pledge represents one of many complications the Palestinians face as they rely on promises to plan their future. The American money is conditioned on congressional approval.
Although the international community has pledged almost $9 billion to support the Palestinians since 1993 through similar pledge-fests, less than half the amount of money promised actually materialized, according to a Palestinian source who asked not to be named. The delinquents include members of the Arab League as well as Japan and Italy, the source said.
"It's not that Italy doesn't want to give the money," said a spokesman for the Italian Foreign Ministry. "It is a practical matter and always takes time" to find the right way to release the money, he said.
Others have not paid because they were suspicious of corruption and incompetence in the Palestinian bureaucracy. Still others, after sending millions of dollars, stopped paying when their efforts -- in new buildings and programs -- were literally blown up in fighting.
http://english.alarabonline.org/display.asp?fname=2007%5C12%5C12-19%5Czotherz%5C941.htm&dismode=x&ts=19/12/2007%2011:44:52%20Õ
No comments:
Post a Comment