The European Union (EU) says it is no longer willing to bail out the Palestinian Authority unless the United States and Arab nations also contribute, said the Guardian newspaper in its online edition Saturday.
EU's external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, has drawn up a paper for foreign affairs ministers warning that the EU's role as the main provider of emergency loans and funding to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is nearing its end, said the report.
"We have done what we can to keep the PA afloat but we cannot go on bankrolling the PA. We need a plan where the PA becomes more solvent," an EU diplomat told the paper.
"Israel's continued closure of border crossings from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip means that the authority is running a monthly deficit of some 44 million dollars," said the diplomat.
The paper said that EU foreign affairs ministers will be asked on Monday during their meeting in Brussels to organize a donors' conference by mid-March in a last bid to get non-European nations to increase their financial assistance.
"In the current crisis, the EU has been one of the main sources of financial support to the PA, helping it to survive from month to month," Pattern said in his paper, but "it cannot and should not continue to shoulder this burden alone."
Patten will also push for EU governments to start putting pressure on Israel to lift its border blockades. Officials, added the Guardian, want the EU to encourage the Israelis to resume collecting customs and tax revenues on the Palestinians' behalf, a measure which used to form the mainstay of the authority's funding base.
Brussels gave the authority around 25 million dollars last December, said the paper, adding that in a one-off emergency measure, the EU agreed to loan the authority almost 78 million dollars to cover costs for 2001.
But the authority had already spent a third of this money in January. At that rate, the EU would be looking at a bill of almost 335 million dollars this year alone.
"Any EU decision to provide further financial assistance to the PA will need to be carefully monitored to ensure that funding is used for its intended purpose," Pattern said.
"There is now a very real risk of a loss of legitimacy and public disillusion with the authority which could lead to anarchy, the atomization of power and increased lawlessness," he added.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to press Israel to end the economic blockade and to release 54 million dollars in tax revenues owed to the authority when he arrives in Jerusalem Sunday.
The Palestinian economy has seen unemployment soar to 38 percent since the Intifada.
Some 32 percent of Palestinians are living on less than $2 a day, according to the Guardian - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
