Posted on 02/27/2006 4:11:22 AM PST by knighthawk
Europe will give 120m euros ($140m; £83m) to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to meet people's basic needs. The European Commission says the money will be enough to keep the authority running for a couple of months.
This follows intense discussion by the international community on whether to continue funding the authority when the militant Hamas group takes power.
The PA has already lost $50m of its funds a month, after Israel blocked tax and duty payments in protest.
About 64m euros will go through UN agencies to the poorest in the Palestinian territories, the Commission says.
A further proportion will pay electricity and oil bills and about 20m euros will pay the salaries of Palestinian Authority officials.
It is Europe's first payment to the PA since the 25 January election win by Hamas, which the EU describes as a terrorist organisation.
Democratic choice
The 25-member European Union has refused to indicate whether it will maintain its funding for the PA with Hamas running the government.
European foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss the issue, although officials say no decision is expected until a Hamas-led cabinet is formed.
Hamas has been urged by donors to change its policies towards Israel, including recognising its right to exist and renouncing violence.
Hamas officials have called on aid donors to respect the Palestinian people's democratic choice of who they want to represent them.
The caretaker Palestinian government faces a salary bill of $60m-$80m for February which it needs to pay next week, according to international envoy James Wolfensohn.
The deficit is $100m this month and could still be as high as $70m next month despite the EU emergency package, Mr Wolfensohn warned in a confidential letter seen by Reuters news agency.
The EU has been the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority since its establishment under the Oslo peace process in 1994.
Ping
Stupid is as stupid does.
The caretaker Palestinian government faces a salary bill of $60m-$80m for February which it needs to pay next week, according to international envoy James Wolfensohn.
Ye gads. Where the heck is all that money going?!
The deficit is $100m this month and could still be as high as $70m next month despite the EU emergency package, Mr Wolfensohn warned in a confidential letter seen by Reuters news agency.
Why was that letter confidential?
Unelected and unaccountable. What a shower.
No doubt the first of many direct payments from EU to terrorists. Does it occur to anyone that perhaps the best way to discourage terrorism is to let people suffer when they make bad choices? The EU is nothing more than an enabler. Unfortunately, I fear the Bush will do the same, despite his public rhetoric.
To meet the basic needs of the people.Abdul's son just turned 13 and needs a new AK,and a few grenades would be nice too.
Well I guess we know what EU means now. Enablers United
Does it occur to anyone that these are the same countries that murdered 6 million Jews and wiped them off the face of europe?
60 years later they are simply doing the same thing using their proxies in the ME.
Palestine wants to become a state. An entity all its own. What kind of State will it be? A beggar state that cant even pay its own salaries without begging from its neighbors?
Its neighbors being other Arab states that have thrown out these dregs of humanity from their own countries should pay this form of penance not states from Europe and the US.
I thought Iran said they would pay, what happened to that deal.
What of taxes and funds from honest labor and productivity,or doesnt Palestine have enough productivity
to keep them afloat. Does a State that has to beggar itself deserve to become a State? Palestine is not a State , it is a ragtag group of outlaws demanding extortion funds and promising to become an even greater pain in the ass if this extortion is not paid. In the case of Israel and the US they demand extortion money and promise to destroy them whether they pay or not. What kind of fool would pay undr those conditions?
Chechnya, the sequel.
Pathetic enablers... euro-trash.
EU doing what they do best ... no entitlements left behind. Personally, I'd send Suha the bill.
So right you are. Nobody can make it a state but them, and they are not cutting it.
Stuck on Stupid.
Of course it will. We all know what is happening here.
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The Commission was forced to say this in writing, because not one member could say it aloud with a straight face.
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