Palestinian PM promises salaries in a few days

GAZA - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh pledged today to pay salaries within days to thousands of government employees who have not received wages since March as a result of an international funds freeze.

Haniyeh, in comments to his Hamas-led government, did not disclose the source of the funds. Palestinian banks have so far refused to transfer money to the Authority, fearing US sanctions.

"I would like to announce that the Ministry of Finance will begin to pay a full month's wages to those earning a monthly salary of up to 1500 shekels ($519.60). The number of those employees is 40,000," Haniyeh said.

He also promised to pay each of the other 125,000 government workers, who earn higher salaries, an advance of 1500 shekels.

Cabinet spokesman Ghazi Hamad said the money would come from donations and internal revenues. There would be no banking complications, he added without elaborating.

The pledged payments could total nearly US$55 million. The Palestinian Authority's monthly salary bill is US$120 million.

International donors have frozen payments to the government, demanding Hamas, an Islamic militant group that came to power after a January election, recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept previous interim peace deals.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, has said negotiations with the Jewish state would be pointless.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, some 1200 unpaid civil servants held a protest outside the prime minister's office, demanding their pay.

Haniyeh made the pledge as the clock ticked down on a 10-day ultimatum from moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to soften its hard line against Israel or face a referendum on peacemaking in July. Abbas' deadline ends this weekend.

Abbas, elected in early 2005, wants Hamas to accept his goal of a negotiated two-state solution to end conflict with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to meet Abbas in the near future, although few have hope of much progress on peacemaking, especially in the wake of Hamas' rise to power.

"Do not build up expectations," Olmert told a cabinet meeting, Israel's Maariv NRG news website reported. "Always after such meetings we get to the stage where the Palestinians do not abide by the obligations they have undertaken."

Olmert has proposed a unilateral plan to remove isolated Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, bolster major enclaves and set frontiers if peace talks remain frozen.

Palestinians have condemned Olmert's blueprint as denying them a viable state they seek in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and accuse Israel of also not carrying out commitments made in previous agreements.

In violence in Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot dead three militants preparing to fire rockets at Israel in the army's first ground raid into the strip since a pullout last year.

A Palestinian policeman, who witnesses said rushed to the scene with medics, was also killed by the troops in the brief operation marking a new Israeli military response to frequent cross-border rocket barrages that have caused few casualties.

In the West Bank, soldiers killed at least two Palestinian gunmen in separate operations.

Witnesses said a third militant was killed by troops in the town of Anabta. But the army denied operating in the area.

- REUTERS