Nuala Haughey
in Jerusalem
Ireland has told the Palestinian Authority it is willing to help fund the redevelopment of Gaza following Israel's planned withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the coastal enclave.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern made the aid offer during his first visit to the Middle East, where he met senior Israeli and Palestinian ministers in Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Israel is due next month to begin evacuating some 8,000 settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip and the land will be redeveloped with housing and amenities for Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinians.
Mr Ahern said he told Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, prime minister Ahmed Korei and foreign minister Dr Nasser al-Kidwa, "that Ireland would be interested in giving bilateral aid to Palestine once Israel moves out of Gaza.
"I maintained that the Gaza disengagement has to take place in the context of the road map for peace."
World leaders agreed at the recent G8 summit to give $3 billion(€2.48 billion) in aid to Palestinians to help rebuild Gaza. Mr Ahern said he did not discuss the amount of aid Ireland would contribute. Last year Ireland gave €4 million in bilateral aid to Palestinians, with half of this going to the UN agency working with refugees. In Jerusalem before returning to Ireland yesterday, Mr Ahern said he had told his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, it would be essential for the economic viability of the Gaza Strip after disengagement for local businesses to freely export their goods.
"Whatever economic prospects they have, if they are not able to sell their produce out of Gaza then the situation would descend into great difficulty."
Mr Ahern's three-day trip was primarily to promote proposed reforms to the UN system, in his position as one of four special envoys of UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
"My remit is mainly Europe, but I was asked if I would discuss with the Palestinians and Israelis the issue of UN reform because they bring to the table a certain perspective, particularly on the issue of terrorism," he said.
Israel supports the rejection of terrorism in the UN's draft reform document, but objects strongly to proposed references to "factors that may contribute to terrorism", arguing that the fight against terrorism cannot be held hostage to "any so-called 'root causes'." The Palestinians want to see a reference to state terrorism, which they accuse Israel of engaging in.
Mr Ahern said both parties were "generally supportive" of the planned UN reforms and did not have "significantly different perspectives. "We discussed the issues as best we could. My role is to be in listening mode but also to promote the proposals Kofi Annan has made. We [ the four UN special envoys] are asked to pick up the nuances and to try to see if there's any way around some of the issues that countries have."
Mr Ahern said Israeli officials complained to him that there are too many politically-inspired resolutions passed against Israel by the UN General Assembly.
Mr Ahern said "there should be more streamlining of procedures at General Assembly level to make it more workmanlike".
Four people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in the Israeli town of Netanya last Tuesday, the second day of Mr Ahern's visit to the region. He condemned the incident, saying it was "an attack on the peace process and an effort to destabilise efforts to bring both sides together".
A rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza killed an Israeli woman at her home yesterday, hours after Israeli troops shot dead a militant commander in a West Bank raid.
Militants said the rocket attack avenged the killing of a militant leader in an army raid into the West Bank city of Nablus, part of an Israeli security offensive after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis on Tuesday. - (Reuters)