Abbas to ask Bush for aid, assurances on peace talks

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will ask President Bush when they meet in Washington tomorrow for written assurances that the United States will not prejudge the outcome of peace negotiations with Israel, and that it will contribute billions in aid to help the West Bank and Gaza Strip recover from years of conflict, according to a senior Palestinian official.

Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian peace negotiator, said Abbas also wants the United States to press Israel to stop expanding Jewish settlements and to guarantee that a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer will be followed by further pullbacks and other measures outlined in an international peace plan known as the ''road map."

Abbas, elected in January after longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November, left the West Bank town of Ramallah for the United States yesterday accompanied by his foreign and finance ministers. His meeting with Bush will mark the first face-to-face talks between an American and a Palestinian president in more than five years, since President Clinton met with Arafat in January 2001.

It comes at a complicated juncture for Abbas, who has managed to get armed factions in the West Bank and Gaza to abide by a shaky truce with Israel but faces a growing political threat from the Islamic Hamas group. He will also meet with members of Congress and Arab-American leaders during his three-day visit.

Bush is expected to press the Palestinian leader to dismantle militant groups in the West Bank and Gaza -- a demand Abbas has repeatedly rejected -- and hasten democratic reforms in the Palestinian Authority. Erekat also said Bush is likely to restate the American view that Palestinian security has not done enough to find the men responsible for the killing of three American security guards in a 2003 ambush in the Gaza Strip.

Erekat said Palestinians had been seeking assurances of an open negotiation process since Bush provided Sharon with a letter last year recognizing that some settlement blocs in the West Bank would come under Israeli sovereignty under any future agreement.

''We'd like to get a letter of assurances from President Bush to President Abbas guaranteeing that issues relating to the final status agreement will be left to negotiations between the parties," Erekat said in an interview.

The fate of about 130 settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war is one of the most hotly disputed issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian Authority wants Israel to dismantle all West Bank settlements, where about 240,000 Israelis live, to make room for a Palestinian state.

Sharon, while planning to evacuate more than 9,000 settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank this summer, has allowed settlements to expand in other parts of the West Bank during his four years as prime minister. In one of the bigger projects, his government gave final approval for the construction of 3,500 housing units in Maaleh Adumim east of Jerusalem earlier this year.

Bush criticized the Maaleh Adumim expansion, but Palestinians contend Washington often overlooks Israeli violations of the road map, including the clause that calls for a complete Israeli settlement freeze.

Erekat, asked how US officials have responded to the request for assurances, said: ''I don't think they're very enthusiastic about providing a letter of assurances."

Erekat estimated it would take several billion dollars to bring the Palestinian areas back to the state they were in before the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

At the height of the insurrection in 2002, Israel ravaged large parts of the infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian suicide attacks against civilian targets within Israel. Security-related travel restrictions limiting entry into Israel have caused average Palestinian wages to drop by about a third in the past four years.

The US Congress has already granted $200 million in additional aid to the Palestinians this year, on top of $75 million approved earlier.

The United States had been wary about giving the Palestinian Authority money while Arafat was alive, citing his ties to what Washington has labeled terrorist groups and alleging widespread corruption. Bush refused to meet Arafat and pressed Palestinians in a landmark speech three years ago to elect a leader untainted by terrorism and graft.

But Erekat and other Palestinians said that American financial aid and pressure on Israel to begin implementing the road map are critical to persuade Palestinian voters to continue supporting Abbas's Fatah party and not vote for the Hamas group in upcoming parliamentary elections. Hamas, a hard-line Islamic group that has carried out many of the suicide attacks against Israel during the uprising, has scored well in several municipal elections in recent months, defeating Fatah in about a third of the contests.

Pollsters say Hamas is poised to take a large bite out of Fatah's power in parliament when the vote takes place. Palestinian officials suggested on Monday that the ballot, scheduled for July 17, would probably be postponed.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Washington this week that Bush would focus mainly on getting Palestinians to crack down on militants and reform their political system.

''The president will be clear that there are commitments to be met, that there are goals to be met, but that democracy is a goal that is unassailable and incontrovertible," she told a gathering at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday.

''The Palestinian Authority must advance democratic reform, and it must dismantle all terrorist networks in its society," she said.