The Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, expanding US involvement in Abbas’s power struggle with Hamas, documents showed on Friday. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday he and Abbas had agreed to keep gunmen from their rival Hamas and Fatah factions off Gaza’s streets after clashes in which eight were killed.Factional fighting has surged in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Abbas challenged the ruling Hamas faction by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after talks on forming a unity government failed.After late-night emergency talks, Haniyeh said he and Abbas had agreed to “withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order”.Abbas made no public comment, but a diplomat who attended the talks and declined to be identified confirmed an agreement had been reached. It was the first meeting between Abbas and Haniyeh in two months.The US money will be used to “assist the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the road map (peace plan) to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza,” a US government document said.The document said Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator between Israel and the Palestinians, would implement the $86.362 million programme “to strengthen and reform elements of the Palestinian security sector controlled by the PA presidency.”The US money will provide Abbas’s presidential guard with training and non-lethal equipment, including vehicles and uniforms, people familiar with the plan said.Israeli officials said Washington had already helped organise shipments of guns and ammunition to the presidential guard from Egypt and Jordan, and that the latest shipment was made last week.The money for the presidential guard was initially earmarked for US aid programmes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, but those programmes were “canceled or suspended after Hamas took power earlier this year,” the US document said.Officials familiar with the US security plan said the money would not be used to pay the salaries of members of the presidential guard.Abbas’s presidential guard currently has about 3,700 members. With aid from the United States and its allies, Abbas hopes to expand it to 4,700 members in 12 to 18 months. Palestinian sources said the guard could grow to 10,000 members.Hamas says its own “Executive Force” has nearly 6,000 members and will also be expanded. Hamas receives funding from Iran and other Islamist allies.
