HOLY LAND: SLOW BUT SURE RETURN TO MAKING THE JIZYA PAYMENTS TO THE "ARABS IN PALESTINE"

US may ease curbs: Palestinian minister

jerusalem • Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad said he was hopeful that the United States would ease banking sanctions that have paralysed the Palestinian government for more than a year.

Fayyad made the comments in interviews with Palestinian newspapers published yesterday after meetings in Washington with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior Bush administration officials.

The State Department made clear it had no intention of lifting sanctions against the Hamas-led government but said the Bush administration was considering whether to make it easier for funds to flow to accounts held by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which has signed interim peace deals with Israel.

Those PLO accounts fall under the control of Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

Western diplomats said Fayyad could try to use the PLO accounts to pay long-overdue government salaries, but doing so could create regulatory and legal problems.

“The secretary (Rice) has expressed understanding to linking our ability to improve financial performance and the need to function freely with the banks,” Fayyad told the al-Ayyam newspaper.

The banking restrictions have been in place since Hamas Islamists came to power in March 2006, forcing donors to redirect funds to Abbas’s office and a European aid mechanism.

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