By NNN-KUNA,
Berlin : Germany has announced a pledge of 15 million Euros in urgent aid to the Palestinians this year and next year.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier made the announcement while addressing the Berlin Conference in Support of Palestinian Civil Security and the Rule of Law, which was held here Tuesday.
He called for helping the Palestinian government improve the economic, social and educational conditions of its people.
Foreign ministers and representatives from some 50 countries attended the conference.
In his speech, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad sought international support for strengthening his police force and court system, a drive that officials said was critical to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Fayyad said improving the Palestinian Authority’s police and court system was also a matter of Palestinian interest. “It is not a question of Israel or the international community demanding it of us,” 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.”
Fayyad cited a Tuesday morning raid in the West Bank town of Nablus as an example of persisting difficulties.
The raid is “an example of the kind of activity that has to stop and stop immediately and promptly if, in fact, we are going to succeed in the provision of security to our people,” Fayyad said.
“The morale of our troops is at stake here, the credibility of the effort is at stake, our own political credibility will continue to be at stake so long as those kinds of incursions continue,” he added.
He called on Israel to stop its daily attacks on Palestinian civilians, and to halt Jewish settlement activities.
For her part, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that “security and the rule of law represent the foundations of any successful, responsible state.”
Rice said that “no one would be happier to see a reconciliation between the Palestinians than I would,” but underlined the need for Hamas to recognise Israel’s right to exist and for the situation in Gaza to return to what it was before the group’s takeover.
“You cannot have reconciliation for peace if there is not a partner that respects the right of the other partner to exist,” she said.
She said the US provided USD 86 million for shoring up Palestinian security agencies, pledging some USD 1 million next year for the same purpose.
At the one-day meeting, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned that time was running short to reach a peace deal on target. “Show us progress, we don’t see any progress,” he said.
For negotiations to work, Moussa said, there needed to be an end to Israeli settlement building; meaningful and serious negotiations; reconciliation between Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas; and Palestinian security and rule of law.
Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said that improving Palestinian security “is fundamental to the two-state solution,” with Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side.
Blair called for more confidence between both Israeli and Palestinian sides, more financial support to the Fayyad-led government and for financing Palestinian security reforms.
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 neighbour is not a failed state or a terror state but a partner in peace.”
German diplomats have put the funding requirements at USD 183.6 million over three years, of which USD 56 million is intended to go to the judicial system. The bulk of the funding was expected to come from the USD 7.4 billion promised to help Palestinians at a donors’ conference in Paris last year.
Over the coming months, the European Union aims to expand its 32-strong police mission to the Palestinians to 70 training personnel in the coming months — including judges, prosecutors and other legal experts.