Posted on 06/18/2007 9:07:30 AM PDT by NapkinUser
The European Union has agreed to resume direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, senior European officials said today, but it is still working out the mechanism for how to transfer the funds.
The remarks by the officials, at a meeting of foreign ministers here, came after the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, installed an emergency cabinet in the West Bank that, in part, replaced ministers belonging to the Hamas faction, which seized control of Gaza last week.
The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the assistance would go to the West Bank and Mr. Abbas’s government, but he did not say how much aid would go to Palestinians in Gaza or how it would be channeled there.
Hamas is considered to be a terrorist organization by Israel and much of the West. After it won a majority of seats in parliamentary elections in January 2006, the European Union and the United States cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.
European officials welcomed Mr. Abbas’s decision to dismiss the Palestinian “unity” government, in which his Fatah party and Hamas shared power, and to appoint a caretaker administration led by a new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, an internationally respected economist who will serve also as finance and foreign minister in the 12-member cabinet.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner responsible for foreign policy, said that European Union officials wanted to meet the new prime minister as part of the process of resuming direct aid.
She was cautious about the timing of the resumption of payments, and said she had had a conversation with Mr. Fayyad to work out the logistics of the transfer of the money, amounting to several hundred thousand euros a year (a euro is worth about $1.34).
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
When Hamas was “swept” into power in the pali “elections”, I’d like to know the margins of victory in Gaza versus the West Bank. Presuming Hamas had a good majority in the West Bank, this aid thing, already in my mind folly, would then be ludicrous folly.
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