Last update - 00:00 10/12/2007
Palestinian PM hopes for $5.6B from donors for economic surge
By The Associated Press
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad said Monday he hopes a donors conference next week will yield $5.6 billion to stoke the economy and lay the basis for an independent state by 2011.
Fayad briefed European Union foreign ministers on his plan for economic renewal and good governance following last month's Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland. At Annapolis, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to resume peace talks.
"We Palestinians are doing what we have to do in order to help ourselves: have strong, competent institutions that put forward the nucleus of a state we are seeking to have," Fayad said at a joint news conference with EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
The Palestinian government has drafted a plan to fund development and reform, institution and capacity building for a three-year period - 2008 through 2011. It will present the plan to an international donors conference in Paris next Monday.
"The total amount of what we need over that period by way of assistance is about $5.6 billion," Fayad said.
Ferrero-Waldner said the European Union - whose total aid to the Palestinians in 2007 amounts to $1.4 billion - will remain generous.
But she stressed that the EU wants to see burden sharing from many, many other countries, including Arab states.
She said key to creating a democratic, contiguous Palestinian state existing side by side in peace and security with Israel was the ability of Palestinians to move freely between the West Bank and Gaza.
"More, much more needs to be done to improve the possibilities of movement and access in the Palestinian territories," said Ferrero-Waldner.
Fayad said the revival of the Palestinian economy requires the removal of Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip - an area run by the virulently anti-Israel Islamic Hamas movement. "The blockade," said Fayad, "is producing absolutely nothing but misery for our people in Gaza."
He said his more moderate Palestinian government has offered to manage the Palestinian side of the Gaza crossings if Israel reopens them.