02 May 2008
Rice Urges Arab States to Do More to Help Palestinians
Funding needed to build future Palestinian state, improve Palestinian lives
Washington -- As Mideast peace negotiations continue, nations must do their part by joining the United States to improve the daily lives of Palestinians and help them to build a future state, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“Countries that have resources and that have an interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state need to put those resources to use now in order to lay the groundwork for the establishment of that state,” Rice said en route to London. She joined fellow members of the Quartet for Middle East Peace -– the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- to assess progress since the November 2007 Annapolis Conference.
Israelis and Palestinians have been making quiet diplomatic progress confronting issues at the heart of a half-century of conflict, Rice said.
A Quartet statement read by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cited progress despite continuing challenges posed by rocket attacks into Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Palestinian concerns over continued Israeli settlement activity.
“This is hard work -- it’s labor-intensive and it’s time-consuming -- but I believe that they do have a chance to get an agreement by the end of the year. And that’s what we’re going to work for every day,” Rice said after the May 2 Quartet meeting in London.
The Quartet’s statement also called on donors to honor their financial pledges to the Palestinian Authority made at a December 2007 Paris donors’ conference.
The international community pledged $1.2 billion in budget assistance to the Palestinian Authority in 2008. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Algeria are the only Arab countries to have provided budgetary assistance, totaling $215 million, to the Palestinians since the December Paris donors' conference. The United States provided $150 million in budget assistance to the Palestinian Authority earlier in 2008 -- the largest sum of money the authority ever has received from a single country in one transfer. Facing an estimated $400 million-$600 million budget shortfall as early as this summer, the Palestinian Authority remains dependent on the world’s help.
This assistance will help Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad’s government implement key reforms and lay the foundation for a two-state solution by improving the authority's ability to govern, deliver essential public services and jump-start economic development in the Palestinian Territories.
“There are Palestinian security forces to be trained. There are Palestinian entrepreneurial funds that need to be developed,” said Rice. “States that have resources ought to be looking not for how little they can do, but how much they can do.”
In addition to its donors’ conference pledges, the United States provided more than $300 million in Palestinian aid during 2007, and already has provided more than $150 million so far for U.N. agencies supporting Palestinian communities across the region in 2008.
The Bush administration also is seeking an additional $200 million from Congress for further aid to the Palestinian Authority. (See “Bush Requests Nearly $7 Billion to Strengthen U.S. Diplomacy.”)
“It’s important for the Palestinian people to see improvements in their lives,” said Rice.
While in London, Rice held a joint discussion with Fayyad and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni before she traveled to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
“These trilaterals are an opportunity to talk to the parties and to hear them talk to each other,” Rice said. “Very often when you hear them talk to each other, it’s perhaps possible to see where areas of convergence are emerging and to help them to see those areas of convergence if they can’t necessarily see them themselves.”
Rice also held separate meetings with U.N., EU and Russian leaders on Kosovo, as well as a session of the P5+1, in which leaders from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States agreed on a new package of incentives aimed at convincing Iran to suspend its controversial nuclear program and join international negotiations.
See a transcript of Rice’s remarks en route to London and the full text of the Quartet statement.
