All Aboard The PLO's
Fund-Raising Bandwagon

THE JERUSALEM POST SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

0

n his way to Oslo late lAst
month — so the joke goes
— Foreign Minister Shi-
mon Peres was asked by
reporters about his plans in
Norway.
"On whose behalf are you go-
ing to raise money there?" they
wanted to know. "For the Unit-
ed Jewish Appeal and the Jew-
ish National Fund?"
Turning to his aides, Mr.
Peres whispered, with a wink:
"No, for the Palestinians."
On the heels of the historic
Israeli-Palestinian accord or-
chestrated by Mr. Peres, the
Europeans in recent days have
quickly taken a leading role in
committing economic aid for the
impending Palestinian author-
ity in the territories.
At the same time, the three
other parties thought to be com-
mitted to providing funds for
a Palestinian governing au-
thority — the United States,
Japan and the oil-producing
Gulf states — are taking a more
hands-off, wait-and-see ap-
proach.
"Proximity
determines
trade," said Riad Ajami, an in-
ternational business professor
at New York's Rochester Insti-
tute of Technology. "Because of
Arab-European trade and Is-
raeli-European trade, Europe
knows it has a vital role to
play."
The European plan is geared
toward developing Palestinian
economic self-sustainment
rather than engaging in pure
charity.
"It's very important to have
a working (Palestinian) ad-
ministration," said Elmer Brok,
a member of the European par-
liament from Germany's Chris-
tian Democratic Party. "What
we have seen in East German
and German reunification is the
need to send people, not just
money, and manpower, not just
monetary assistance."
Brok, in a telephone inter-
view from Brussels, said the
European Community might
model assistance to a Palestin-
ian government on its recent
PHARE program for worker re-
training in Hungary, Czecho-
slovakia and Poland; and the
TACIS (Technical Assistance
to the CIS) program which pro-
vides technical assistance in the
form of vocational and econom-
ic training to residents of the
Commonwealth of Independent
States.
First aboard the fund-raising
bandwagon were the Scandi-

navian countries. Their foreign
ministers, following a previ-
ously scheduled meeting two
weeks ago in Gottland, Sweden,
linked an economic plan to the
Israeli-PLO agreement. They
announced readiness to provide
what they called "significant
economic assistance" to the
West Bank and Gaza for the
purposes of "consolidating and
carrying forth the peace
process."
That assistance comes to
$125 million, according to Lars
Romert, the Swedish Em-
bassy's press officer in Wash-
ington.
Just last Wednesday, the Eu-
ropean Commission (the exec-
utive body of the 12-member
European Community) an-
nounced it was proposing a five-
year, $600-million development

The Newly Designed
1994 DeVille Concours

"It mostly
depends on the
Palestinians,
what they want."

Hideo Sato

program starting in 1994.
The proposal centers on what
an aide close to EC Develop-
ment Commissioner Manuel
Marin called "traditional de-
velopment programs" consist-
ing of both loans for small
enterprises and grants for pub-
lic-works projects.
But aid for the territories is,
it turns out, part of a package
that represents a turning point
in the EC's economic dealings
in the Middle East, the aide
said in an interview from Brus-
sels. Nearly $900 million in EC
aid to Israel and its neighbors
budgeted from 1992 to 1996 will
be redirected from joint EC pro-
grams to regional economic de-
velopment programs.
The EC will condition aid to
the region on the parties' abil-
ity to agree to such cooperative
ventures as road and water sys-
tems, he said. Syria, Jordan and
Egypt will be pressured by the
EC to accept these terms.
Because of the Israeli-PLO
accord, the EC will no longer
"continue bilateral relations as
if nothing were happening in
the region, but will use money
to enhance economic coopera-
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