Rice plans to boost funding for Abbas forces--Palestine

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061215/pl_nm/palestinians_rice_dc

Rice plans to boost funding for Abbas forces

3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday she would ask the U.S. Congress for tens of millions of dollars to strengthen the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.


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The United States wants to ensure that Abbas, whose Fatah party was trounced by Hamas in elections last January, emerges victorious in any power struggle with Hamas and has been saying for months that more needs to be done to boost his forces.

But Rice cautioned this could take some time.

"You can't build security forces overnight to deal with the kind of lawlessness that is there in Gaza which largely derives from an inability to govern," she said.

"Their (the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority) inability to govern, of course, comes from their unwillingness to meet international standards," she added.