DONORS CONSIDER LARGE INCREASE IN AID TO PALESTINIANS

 Artículo de STEVEN R. WEISMAN  en “The New York Times” del 17/12/2004

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - The United States, Europe and Arab countries are considering greatly increasing - maybe even doubling - aid to the Palestinians on condition that they and Israel take certain steps toward reducing their conflict, American and Palestinian officials say.

A four-year package of $6 billion to $8 billion would be forthcoming, they said, if the Palestinian elections set for Jan. 9 occurred successfully and if the new government cracked down on militant groups and Israel lifted scores of roadblocks and checkpoints to ease the transit of goods and people in Palestinian areas.

The possibility of an aid increase was the subject of intense discussions at a donors meeting on Dec. 8 in Oslo. According to participants, the aim of the meeting was to help moderate Palestinian leaders after the death of Yasir Arafat and to prepare for the fulfillment of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to pull settlers and forces out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

The World Bank says the package, which would come from the United States, the European Union, Arab states and other donors, would be the largest per person international aid program since World War II.

The Palestinians are already the world's largest per capita recipients of international aid, getting about $1 billion for 3.5 million inhabitants, or nearly $300 per person. The contemplated aid package would increase that amount by 50 to 100 percent.

To support the new Palestinian leaders and send a signal to European and Arab leaders to step up their own aid programs, the United States announced in Oslo that it would add to the $200 million it contributed indirectly to the Palestinians this year by channeling another $20 million directly to the Palestinian Authority.

"What you are seeing is a new effort to coordinate with Europeans and the Palestinians on these issues," said a senior Bush administration official. "The question is whether it will be possible after the Palestinian elections to reorganize Palestinian forces and get them to restore order. The answer so far has been no. But now there is a chance." No pledges were sought at Oslo, participants said. Instead the discussion focused on what aid might be realistic.

"We are looking at the possibility of another $500 million a year or more, but it has to be in the context of conditions permissive to a much deeper development effort," Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister, said in a telephone interview from Qatar. "That cannot happen unless conditions on the ground improve substantially."

Other officials said the target was an additional $500 million to $1 billion a year. Despite the large aid amounts in recent years, economic conditions have deteriorated and a lot of the financing was deemed wasted. Donors have complained of poor accounting practices.

A large portion of the financing in recent years has gone not for development but to help the Authority meet its payroll of 130,000 employees - a major jobs program that has prevented destitution for more than a million Palestinians.

Donors have been increasingly unhappy that so much of their money has gone to keep the Palestinian Authority afloat, and not to long-term economic improvement, but they say that Mr. Fayyad has instituted reforms improving accountability and increasing tax collections.

"He's taken a number of measures establishing tighter control over public finance," said Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's director for the West Bank and Gaza. "But donors are also able to see that all their spending over the last four years has yielded very little, and they want to exercise some leverage over the situation."

Mr. Fayyad said the Palestinian uprising of the last four years, and the Israeli response of sending forces throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had combined to devastate the economy. "We've had an existence of hand to mouth, all kinds of arrears, late payments, a miserable existence," he said. "We've been so preoccupied with cash management, it has been hard to focus on improving our economic infrastructure."

European and Arab donors are likely to call on the United States to pay more attention to their views in peace talks as they demand a say in return for their increased donations.

The Palestinians have already started courting Arab countries for the money. This week Mr. Fayyad has been accompanying Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Mr. Arafat as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and is on a tour of Gulf countries, some of which have not come through on past pledges.

Mr. Fayyad and Mr. Abbas, the leading candidate for Palestinian Authority president, are arguing that Arab countries can afford to be more generous because of high oil prices. In an important gesture to one donor nation, Mr. Abbas has also apologized to Kuwaiti leaders for Mr. Arafat's failure to denounce Iraq's invasion of their country in 1991.

"If you have those things in place, plus improved internal governance by Palestinians, then you can legitimately go to the donor community and say, 'Maybe your $1 billion a year hasn't produced much, but we think there's a case for doing even more in the next three or four years,' " said Mr. Roberts of the World Bank.

"This is going to require a huge push for the donor community," he said, adding that while the Palestinians had instituted many reforms, many more were needed to establish the rule of law and eliminate payoffs and corruption.

As for Israel's myriad checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, the Bush administration has long been pressing Israel to remove them to make the coming elections easier to conduct. But Israeli leaders plan to do so for only a three-day period before the voting.

A senior Bush administration official said Mr. Abbas's attempts to negotiate a cease-fire by Palestinian militant groups during the campaign period was welcome but must be followed by a genuine crackdown after the elections.

"Cease-fires are not the answer," the official said. "But if the Israelis react to the Palestinian cease-fire by easing conditions, and the Palestinians react to that by getting control of security, you can have a kind of virtuous circle that has to be a step forward."

Some European leaders, anticipating increased leverage as European financing for the Palestinians increases, are pressing Israel and the Palestinians to start talking soon about difficult issues like Jerusalem, the boundaries of a Palestinian state and the status of refugees.

The Bush administration and Mr. Sharon's government want those issues put off until the Palestinians show more progress against terrorism. "We're trying to maintain a united front with the Europeans," the senior administration official said, "and I think we've succeeded on that. We can achieve a solution by keeping our eyes focused on realistic goals and not talking about pie in the sky."