Palestinian aid to come under scrutiny from MEPs

Date: 23/01/03

EU FUNDING for the Palestinian Authority is to be subject to regular monitoring by selected MEPs under a deal worked out this week.

It was agreed on Tuesday (21 January) that a working group would be formed, comprising representatives of the European Parliament's committees on foreign affairs, budgets and budgetary control.

Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner, promised yesterday the group will have his wholehearted support.

Yet he made a thinly-veiled attack on those deputies who have alleged that some EU aid to the Palestinians is being siphoned off to terrorists.

"What has caused me the most concern is not the suggestion that I should work with the Parliament but that I have been on the receiving end of a campaign of fabrication and half-truth," he said.

One of Patten's fiercest critics on the issue, UK Conservative deputy Charles Tannock, had been pushing for a fully-fledged committee of inquiry to be established over the allegations. He was 11 short of the 157 signatures he needs to trigger the inquiry this week.

His failure to reach the target has been partly due to the reluctance of German centre-right MEPs to sign.

Leading Christian Democrat deputy Armin Laschet received a detailed letter on the funding from Patten yesterday (22 January).

This was sufficient to dissuade him from signing.

Laschet wanted assurances the €10 million which the Union hands over to the Palestinians each month is meticulously monitored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

This was put in doubt by a senior IMF official, Thomas Dawson, who stated that it provided the EU only with details of general developments on use of the budget.

But Rosa Valdivieso, the IMF's mission chief for Gaza and the West Bank, gave categorical assurances in late November.

She said the IMF found that Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad had ushered in rigorous procedures to report in a transparent manner monthly expenditure commitments by all ministries and agencies.

EU funding for the Palestinian Authority is to be subject to regular monitoring by selected MEPs under a deal agreed on 21 January 2003.