World pledges $7.4 billion for Palestinian recovery

FRANCE, Led by Europe, international donors have pledged US$7.4 billion (euro5.1 billion) over the next three years to help stateless Palestinians as new peace talks begin with Israel.

Yet, old Mideast fights over disputed land and restrictions on Palestinian movement shadowed the largest show of support for the Palestinians in more than a decade.

World leaders at the conference Monday urged Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, following up on a warning from the World Bank that without an easing of the sweeping physical and administrative restrictions donors may be wasting their money.

Israel has been reluctant to lift scores of roadblocks in the West Bank, many of them put there by the Israeli military amid the street violence and suicide bombings that followed collapse of the last peace talks seven years ago.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas used the session to demand that Israel freeze building in Jewish settlements without excuses or exceptions. Palestinians are outraged by Israel's announcement, within days of the formal start of the new peace effort at a U.S.-backed peace conference last month, that it planned hundreds of new Jewish houses in east Jerusalem.

"It's the moment of truth," Abbas told some 90 donor countries and international organizations gathered in Paris. "I'll be eager to implement all our commitments," Abbas said, and "I expect them to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions."

The pledges are meant to help Abbas and other moderate Palestinian leaders in their power struggle with Islamic Hamas militants who have seized the Gaza Strip, the smaller territory that with the West Bank would make up an eventual independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Palestinians want east Jerusalem as their capital.

Abbas ruled out dialogue with Hamas, and warned that without international support Gaza is "heading into disaster." Gaza has been virtually cut off from the world since the Hamas takeover in June. Israel and Egypt sharply restricted border access in response, and the blockade has further deepened poverty there.

The aid pledged will include money for Gaza, Palestinian officials said. It also includes countries' contributions to U.N. and other international humanitarian agencies. Israel pledged no money, but the chief Israeli negotiator outlined hopes for cooperation with Palestinians.

"We need you to know that Palestinian welfare and Israeli security are not competing interests; they are interconnected ones," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told delegates. "We have no desire to control Palestinian lives. We do not want the image of Israel in the Palestinian mind to be a soldier at a checkpoint."

International peacemakers meeting on the sidelines of the conference said movement must be freer and expressed dismay at the new housing plan in east Jerusalem. The group that includes the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia also said the humanitarian situation in the sealed-off Gaza Strip is urgent.

The language of a statement issued by the group was unusually sharp, and contrasted with the celebratory atmosphere as organizers tallied the pledges. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the world has a last chance to salvage the Palestinian government from bankruptcy. The pledges topped the Palestinians' own expectations.

"The real winner today is the Palestinian state," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a news conference after the gathering.

"We wanted US$5.6 billion (euro3.89 billion), we have US$7.4 billion (euro5.14 billion) - not bad," he said. Governments would have to make good on the pledges, and some attached conditions. The pledges include $3.4 billion (euro2.3 billion) for 2008, the year that both sides have said they want to use to reach peace.

European nations pledged more than US$3 billion (euro2 billion), including US$650 million (euro440 million) from the European Union alone, in 2008. Similar levels were expected for 2009 and 2010.

The United States pledged US$555 million (euro382.5 million). The U.S. money includes about US$400 million (euro275 million) that the White House already announced but has not yet been approved by Congress.

Paris, Tuesday, AP