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US receptive to Palestinian funding needs
LONDON - The United States would look favourably on a request from the Palestinian Authority for more funds to plug a budget shortfall, the top U.S. aid official said on Thursday. Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, is in London for a meeting on Friday of international donors who last December pledged $7.4 billion to the Palestinians over three years to support efforts to find peace in the Middle East.

A report from the International Monetary Fund, released in advance of Friday's meeting, said the Palestinian Authority faced a $400 million budget shortfall in the second half of the year.

Asked if Washington would be amenable to a request for more money to help with the budget shortfall, Fore said: "Yes, we think that this is an important part of the world. It's important to support and back strong efforts of progress of people who are working for peaceful, prosperous solutions."
Oh, geez ...
At the December donors' conference in Paris, the United States pledged $555 million for Palestinians over the next year, including $150 million in budget support.
That's $150 million I'd put into wind turbine farms off Nantucket ...
Fore said there was a problem with some countries not disbursing the funds they had promised in Paris. "It is important that we keep up with the good progress of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister (Salam) Fayyad's government," she told Reuters in an interview. "So no doubt we will focus (at Friday's conference) on making sure that governments and organisations that have made pledges are making good on their pledges, and in a timely fashion to be useful," she said.

Fore was due to hold talks with Fayyad on Thursday to hear about the situation first hand.

"From what we are seeing there has been good solid financial progress," she said. But the Palestinian Authority's needs had increased both because of the weaker dollar and because it was paying its bills more quickly, she said. "So I'd like to look at that, I'd like to see what their financial needs are and what their progress is," she said.
Henrietta, any chance you could, say, tie the money to getting the krazed killers to back down?
She did not expect the United States to pledge new money on Friday however.

U.S. aid finances economic development, building of infrastructure and humanitarian aid in the Palestinian territories.
Thus allowing the Paleos to use their own money for the Widows Ammunition Fund ...
U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza, run by the Islamist group Hamas, is stolen thrown away burned channelled mainly via through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Posted by: Steve White 2008-05-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=238060