Washington donor countries conference for Palestine starts
Palestine-Regional, Economics, 11/30/1998

The conference of donor countries for Palestine will be held today in Washington.

Representatives of at least 45 countries will gather at the State Department in a remake of the conference, held in Washington in October 1993 to raise financial funds to support the Middle-East peace process.

Morocco will be represented in the meeting by minister of foreign affairs and cooperation, Abdellatif Filali.

According to sources close to the US administration, the United States expects to raise pledges of over $2 billion over five years for Palestine and is promising to increase its own contribution to more than the $ 500 million it promised at the 1993 meeting, MAP reported.

Out of the $ 4 billion pledged during the previous donors conference, only a half was actually disbursed.

Unemployment in Palestinian government areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip decreased tangibly in the first half of 1998, mainly because of fewer Israeli-imposed border closures, but it still stood at 15.6 percent, the United Nations says.

Real monthly household expenditure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell 10.6 percent in the first quarter of 1998 compared to the same period in 1997, a U.N. report said.

A report by the Palestinian Authority this month said 23 percent of families in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem (Al-Quds), live below the poverty line.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is attending the conference but Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon will not due to political preoccupations in his country.

White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said that US President Bill Clinton has pledged $400 million in US economic assistance to the Palestinians over the next several years. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the opening of a Palestinian donor conference underway today in the US that the lives of the Palestinians are often "uncertain and difficult" due to financial pressures and told the participants, "Our pledges will provide the funds and technical assistance necessary to support the negotiators, so that peace is understood to mean not just the absence of war but the presence of jobs, schools, homes and hope."

Previous Stories:
  Palestine spent $7 billion over five years   (8/19/1998)
  Arafat forms committee for donor countries project proposals   (8/12/1998)
  Palestine hopes donor countries money continue to flow   (6/30/1998)

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