Countries commit $240M to strengthen Palestinians

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Countries commit $240M to strengthen Palestinians

Tuesday 24 June 2008
By: GEIR MOULSON, The Associated Press
BERLIN

Countries at a one-day conference Tuesday agreed to commit more than $240 million to help strengthen the Palestinian Authority's police force and court system, a diplomat said.

Donors have committed $242 million to projects that include police training and building a forensic lab, prisons and courthouses, said a diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity because the gathering was still ongoing.

Organizers had hoped representatives from more than 40 countries at the conference would commit about $190 million.

"It is not a question of Israel or the international community demanding it of us," Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said. "Security is the most important service any responsible government must provide to its citizens.

"It is as much a Palestinian interest as an Israeli interest," he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stressed that, for Israel, law enforcement and security "are the basic requirements that must be met in order to create a Palestinian state."

"It is not enough to determine the borders of a future Palestinian state," she said. "When handing over the keys to the Palestinians, we must know that our neighbor is not a failed state or a terror state but a partner in peace."

Organizers have said the bulk of the funding was expected to come from the $7.4 billion promised at a donors' conference in Paris last year.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and officials from Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were all in attendance.

International Middle East envoy Tony Blair said improving Palestinian security "is fundamental to the two-state solution," with Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side.

Rice said that "security and the rule of law represent the foundations of any successful, responsible state."

Over the coming months, the European Union aims to expand its 32-member police mission to the Palestinians to 70 training personnel _ including judges, prosecutors and other legal experts.

The so-called EUPOL COPPS mission has been bolstering a now 900-member civil police force. It plans to widen its focus to improving jails and how courts operate.

The head of the EU police mission to the Palestinians said last week that money was needed whether or not Israel and the Palestinians meet their goal of a peace deal by year's end, which would lead to the setting up of a Palestinian state.

"There would be no point creating a Palestinian state in six months' time if it doesn't have security organizations, judiciary and the institutions that it needs to be a state," Colin Smith said.

Smith said the courts were backed up, with 80 percent of prisoners in Palestinian jails waiting to be sentenced.

The funding being sought is for the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank; the authority does not control the Gaza Strip, taken over last year by the Islamic militant group Hamas.