wo Palestinian delegations, a Fatah headed by Ahmed Qorei and a Hamas delegation headed by Moussa Abu Marzouk, arrived at Egyptian security chief Omar Suleiman's headquarters in Cairo for a new round of talks. Officially the talks are meant to be a resumption of the negotiations with the aim of forging a Palestinian unity government. The reconciliation talks, which had begun on 10 March, were interrupted on 2 April on orders from Washington, to where Omar Suleiman had been summoned. Since then the situation has not changed.The US administration has put a veto on all agreements between the two rival Palestinian parties that would entail a recognition, even on a formal and purely working level, of Hamas. The US even thwarted off Omar Suleiman's mediation offer to put reconciliation between the two rival parties and the creation of a Palestinian unity government on hold and to focus instead on setting up a joint commission. The creation of the commission would have been aimed solely at creating an administrative body capable of managing, on a purely operational level, the flow of money and supplies needed for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government, the US and its Western allies rejected the Egyptian proposal of a working commission to manage Palestinian reconstruction aid.
The US remain determined to use the 4.5 billion dollars, pledged by international donors for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, to convey prestige and legitimacy towards Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah leadership. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday expressed a clear veto against any Palestinian national unity government ordering no aid to be given to the Gaza Strip unless and until the Hamas movement remains in control of its administration. Egypt, whose sitting government relies for its own survival on US military aid is expected to convey this message to the Palestinian delegations today.
Every effort is being made to boost the importance of Mahmous Abbas and his group from the outside. Companies set up and managed by the sons of Abbas have been promised contracts to repair roads and infrastructure in the West Bank, paid for by US government aid through the USAID. Only recently Reuters news agency disclosed that construction companies and public relations firms run by Tarek Abbas and Yasser Mahmoud Abbas received over two million dollars in contracts and subcontracts since 2005, when their father Mahmoud Abbas was elected President. According to USAID, Yasser Abbas' Falcon Mechanical Contracting Company and the Sky Advertising Company, managed by Tarek Abbas, won their contracts, allegedly in “full and open” competitive bidding. On the other hand, USAID refused to disclose documents regarding the procedures leading to the award of loan guarantees, grants, agricultural help and other business-boosting funds, nor the identities of the Palestinian firms which have received such benefits. However, Reuters obtained dozens of documents detailing how USAID funded projects to promote Abbas’s administration without disclosing its role. In this context Reuters quoted a 2007 US ”fact sheet” laying out a post-election strategy of providing ”targeted, discreet support to emerging leaders, independent media, and selected civil society efforts”
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