Last update - 00:00 18/12/2007
U.S., Britain to host investors' conference for PA in Bethlehem
By News Agencies
The United States and Britain will host an investors' conference aimed at bolstering the Palestinian economy in Bethlehem in March or April
next year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday.
In a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the two leaders discussed how to build on the progress made in Paris on Monday, when 87 countries and international organizations pledged $7.4 billion over the next three years to the Palestinians.
The most ambitious fundraising effort in more than a decade is aimed at helping the Palestinians to create a viable, peaceful and secure state of their own, and to promote new peace talks beginning with Israel.
"The U.K. will sponsor an investors' conference in Bethlehem in March or April 2008," Brown told a joint news conference with Abbas.
"The United States of America and Britain together will host the conference... It's an important signal about the need for investment to create jobs for prosperity and opportunity in the Palestinian areas," he added.
"I believe there will be international support from a number of countries in Europe and America," he said.
"We stand ready to follow up the Bethlehem conference with other initiatives that would make it possible for people from all over the world to contribute to the economic development."
Abbas told the conference through a translator that "this is a golden opportunity and we have to exploit it to the maximum."
"We don't say these are easy problems, there are lots of complexities but it's our duty that we have to overcome these complexities," he said.
Before the Paris meeting, Britain - one of the leading donors - was the only one that emphasized it would link disbursement to improved conditions on the ground. The improvements sought include the easing of Israeli travel restrictions and Palestinian reforms as trimming the government payroll and cutting subsidies for utilities.
"Britain will do more than just offer financial support to create jobs and prosperity in the Palestinians," Brown told the news conference. "But of course we will join with our European colleagues in giving policing and security support," he added.
"We are determined to work with President Abbas and Olmert to overcome all obstacles to the achievement in 2008 of a successful solution of these issues," Brown said.
Britain has said the $490 million pledged in Paris to aid the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is dependent on the Palestinians and Israel taking steps to ensure the aid is effective.
In October, Brown - who became prime minister in June - used his first meeting with Olmert to say that Britain was ready to give economic help to the Palestinians if they can reach an agreement to a two-state solution that protects Israel's security.
Like Britain, world leaders at the Paris conference Monday urged Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza.
That followed a warning from the World Bank that, without an easing of the sweeping physical and administrative restrictions, donors could be wasting their money.
Israel has been reluctant to lift scores of roadblocks in the West Bank, many put there by the Israel Defense Forces amid the street violence and suicide bombings that followed the collapse of the last peace talks seven years ago.
Abbas used Monday's session to demand that Israel freeze building in West Bank settlements without excuses or exceptions. Palestinians are outraged by Israel's announcement, within days of the start of the new peace effort at a U.S.-backed peace conference last month, that it planned hundreds of new houses in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians consider occupied by Israel annexed soon after the 1967 Six-Day War.
The aid pledged will include money for Gaza, Palestinian officials said. It also includes contributions to UN and other international humanitarian agencies.
Israel pledged no money on Monday, but Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads the Israeli negotiations team, 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," 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."
The Paris conference was organized by Mideast envoy Tony Blair, who was replaced by Brown as Britain's prime minister.
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