Rice Announces Palestinian Aid Program

02/07/2005

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday the United States will provide more than $40 million in aid to the Palestinians during the next three months and also appoint a new “security coordinator” to help Palestinian forces.

Rice, at a news conference with the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the aid package a “quick action program” that would have an “immediate positive impact.”

She said the money would be used to create jobs and improve infrastructure.

“This is a time of hope, a time we can hope for a better day for the Palestinian and Israeli people both,” she said.

She also announced that the United States would appoint a coordinator to assist Palestinian security forces.

“It really is to provide a focal point” for training and equipping Palestinian forces monitoring the peace, she said.

Rice offered few details about the coordinator, but said they would be provided soon.

Rice has previously said the United States has no plans to appoint a high-level diplomatic envoy to represent the United States in the peace process. The security coordinator would represent a less formal U.S. involvement.

Abbas thanked Rice for the U.S. assistance and encouraged the Bush administration to remain actively involved. He also thanked her for helping last year when Israel announced plans to seize some property owned by Palestinians in Israel.

“We hope that the Israeli side also will meet its obligations because this is the only path” to achieve the ideal of the two states existing side by side in peace, Abbas said.

Rice said the $40 million in aid is part of the $350 million that President Bush pledged during his State of the Union address.

According to the State Department, the aid will be from money set aside earlier for a seawater desalinization plant in Gaza. The money will not go directly to the Palestinian Authority, but will be channeled through private relief and economic groups.

Rice’s two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank headquarters of the newly elected Palestinian government is meant to nudge both sides to take hold of what Rice has called “a time of opportunity” and end four years of war.

She said what she has heard from both sides bodes well for their upcoming summit in Egypt.

“The U.S. will do its part,” she said.

It is the first time in years that a senior American official has gone to Ramallah, site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s crumbling compound.

Rice met privately Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the former warrior turned potential peacemaker.

“This is a hopeful time, but it is a time also of great responsibility for all of us to make certain that we act on the words that we speak,” Rice said before sitting down with Sharon at his office. She later had dinner with him.

Sharon greeted Rice warmly, telling her in English, “you are among friends.”

“Her visit, I believe, will contribute to the peace process that we so much want to advance,” Sharon said in Hebrew.

In a boost to peace prospects, the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah said Sunday it would agree to a mutual cease-fire with Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. Fatah also ruled out attacks against civilians inside Israel.

Palestinians hope for such a mutual declaration when Abbas meets Sharon at a summit in Egypt. Rice is not attending that gathering.

Rice’s visit also comes as Israel backed off its long-standing refusal to release Palestinian prisoners accused of violence against Israelis. Israeli officials said top aides to Sharon and Abbas also have agreed to form a committee to study additional Palestinian prisoner releases.

A lasting peace deal for Israel and creation of a Palestinian democracy are chief foreign policy goals for the United States in President Bush’s second term. For now, though, the United States is taking a low-key approach.

As Rice visited European capitals last week, she repeatedly said that Israel and the Palestinians should control their own path to peace, with help from the United States, Europeans and others.

In Turkey earlier Sunday, Rice said the United States has no immediate plans to name a special envoy for Middle East peace, although the administration is working on ways to monitor or enforce a cease-fire.

Rice is making an eight-day trip through Europe and the Middle East, her first overseas diplomacy since taking over from Colin Powell at the State Department.

Arafat’s death in November invigorated the stalled peace process, and more hopeful signs followed.

The new Palestinian leadership has embraced nonviolence, deployed police to keep the peace in Gaza and won pledges from militants to halt attacks on Israel.

Israel has promised to release hundreds of prisoners, stop offensive military operations and gradually pull out of five West Bank towns.

While still characterized by great distrust, Israeli-Palestinian relations are improving dramatically ahead of the summit Tuesday.

From the Middle East, Rice returns to Europe on Monday for meetings with Italian, French and other leaders. Her stops are to help pave the way for Bush’s own meetings with European and Russian heads of state later this month.