By DPA
Paris : Donors at a key international conference in Paris began pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to help bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his effort to resuscitate his deteriorating economy.
By mid-day, donations had reached at least $2 billion, nearly half the sum asked for by the Palestinians.
European Union (EU) Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner announced a contribution by her bloc alone of $650 million in aid, while the US was expected to give $550 million, and other individual countries also promised large sums. These included France with $300 million and Sweden with $210 million.
Addressing representatives of 86 nations gathered in the French capital, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Israel to freeze construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank “without exceptions.”
He pledged to implement obligations under the revived 2003 “road map” peace plan – which commits the Palestinians to combat militants and Israel to freeze settlement activity – but said he expected Israel to do the same “without excuses.”
He spoke shortly before Acting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was to present a three-year programme for reform and development at the conference.
In return, the Palestinians want as much as $5.6 billion for the coming three years. Fayyad has warned that he does not want the entire sum invested in development projects, but needs cash to keep his near-bankrupt government running.
Former British premier Tony Blair, who as special envoy for the “Quartet” of Middle East mediators plays a central role in building the Palestinian economy as well as institutions for statehood, told the conference the initiative to be presented by Fayyad was “the first comprehensive plan to rebuild the Palestinian state.
“The importance of the document,” Blair said, was “not in the detail, but in its tone.”
Abbas also called on Israel to free more Palestinian militants from its prisons and to dismantle military roadblocks in the West Bank. The latter is considered crucial if the huge effort to revive the Palestinian economy is to succeed.
Israel says the roadblocks have foiled dozens of planned suicide bombings.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would examine each day “checkpoint by checkpoint” how best to balance Israel’s security and Palestinian economic needs.
She welcomed Fayyad’s reform plan as a serious effort to build the basis for a responsible Palestinian state and said Israel was ready to meet its road map obligations.
Livni said agreement had been reached in principle on a EU training programme for an expanded Palestinian police force.
A test force of some 500 policemen has already deployed in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. “We hope to sign an agreement on this issue in the coming days,” she said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier opened the conference by calling for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state before the end of 2008 and an end to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Sarkozy issued a challenge to the radical Islamic group Hamas, which governs Gaza.
“Peace will not be made without Gaza,” he said. “And peace will not be made with groups that do not recognize Israel. This is unacceptable.”
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum in Gaza defiantly dismissed the conference as one which “only serves the security interests of Israel,” while “the Palestinians get nothing, except expansion of settlements and more escalation.”
The Paris conference is a follow-up to the Nov 27 Middle East conference in Annapolis at which Abbas and Olmert pledged to revive long-stalled negotiations and make effort to reach a peace deal by the end of 2008.
A joint steering committee charged with conducting the negotiations held its first meeting last week, but these talks were overshadowed by violence in Gaza and an Israeli plan to build 307 new apartments in a controversial Jewish neighbourhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, built on occupied West Bank land.
The Paris conference is the third step in the process launched in Annapolis, and is considered crucial for boosting faith in the peace process and supporting the moderates among the Palestinians in their power-struggle with the radicals.