Financial support for the Palestinian Authority should continue while there is an interim government, Quartet principals decided during a conference call Monday, a day before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set out for a trip to the region..
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The Quartet's decision to continue funding the interim PA government came a day after Israel decided to stop further transfers of customs and tax revenue to the PA, a sum that amounts to between $50 million and $60 million a month.
Rice arrived in Cairo Tuesday on the first leg of a trip that will focus on building Arab opposition to Hamas and to Iran's nuclear ambitions. "The international community expects that any Palestinian government will have to meet certain requirements of governing, which means a dedication to peace, a dedication to the agreements that the Palestinians have signed on to before," Rice said during a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit. "Obviously you can't have peace if you don't recognize the other partner," Rice said, adding that Hamas needed to recognize Israel's right to exist and needed to renounce terrorism.
Before departing for Cairo, Rice spoke via conference call with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. According to a Western diplomatic official familiar with the conversation, the Quartet agreed on the following points:
· Financial support to the interim PA government should continue.
· Humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians would continue.
· The Quartet principals should increase their cooperation and talk each week.
· Ways to support PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas needed to be determined
· Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn is to provide a summary of the PA's financial requirements, potential sources of funding and the gap between what money is needed and what is available.
Wolfensohn's report, due Wednesday, is designed to give the Quartet an accurate picture of how much money the PA needs to keep it from financial collapse
I wasn’t going to mention it but the irony in this situation just cracks me right up. Who would have thought that the Quartet is looking for ways to support and prop up a man who received a Ph’D in Holocaust denial from a Moscow university while David Irving is sentenced to jail this week in Europe for saying what Mahmoud Abbas wrote in his dissertation and received academic accreditation for? Not even Monty Phython could have been this bold or outrageous.
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