International aid to Yasser Arafat has been cut in half because of suspicions of corruption and a Palestinian failure to show the money is being spent properly, Western diplomats and officials in the West Bank said yesterday.
Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad said aid from the European Union, which used to run $120 million a year, had fallen to $80 million.
The union is Arafat’s biggest financial supporter and had earmarked the money for relief aid and to cover the salaries of 120,000 Palestinian civil-service employees. Fayyad gave no figures for donations from Arab states but said all international aid to the Palestinians had dropped “by around half” over the last two years.
Western diplomats said more than $50 million in European Union aid was being held back until the Palestinian Authority paid salaries for its security services through bank transfers – rather than by cash that cannot be traced.
In other developments:
* German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank. “In my view, this is a very promising perspective,” Fischer said.
* An official with an international monitoring group in Hebron blamed Israeli policies for the departure of 15,000 of the West Bank town’s 35,000 residents.
* Palestinian hospital officials in the Gaza Strip said a man had been shot by Israeli troops near Rafah and died.
With Post wires