Palestinians bid for cash with investor conference

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Mazen Sinokrot wants foreigners invited by the Palestinian government to an investor conference this week to get the right idea -- so he'll be publicly taking delivery of $12 million in business funding.

When the conference starts in Bethlehem on Wednesday, his family conglomerate will sign a deal with a local investment group to fund a turkey processing unit. The deal was in the works anyway, but Sinokrot wants to drive home the message in public that there are Palestinian businesses worth investing in.

"There is an opportunity now to do business in Palestine," the chairman of Sinokrot Global Group said, adding that his own new poultry venture could create 600 jobs.

That is also the message Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, and the Western governments that are backing him with billions in taxpayers' money want to get over to international private investors during the three-day gathering in Bethlehem.

Quite how many will be paying attention is as yet unclear, although some of the participants have started arriving in the Palestinian areas, many for the first time.

Hours before President Mahmoud Abbas will open the conference, the full delegate list was still not available from organizers but Fayyad and others involved in organizing the conference, will be reassured by the presence of representatives from a number of major Arab investment groups.

Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co's chief executive officer, Ghanim bin Saad al-Saad said there were major opportunities for Arab investors in the Palestinian areas.

"But I think the problem is the freedom of movement for investors to come and invest in Palestine, and I think it's the duty of the international community to help remove these obstacles," Ghanim told Reuters in an interview.

He said he will announce at the conference that his company has signed a deal with top Palestinian businessman Bashar Masri, owner of Massar International, to invest in a $350 million project to build a new Palestinian town in the West Bank.

Also scheduled to speak are officials of several U.S. manufacturing firms, including microchip maker Intel.

Fayyad, appointed 11 months ago when Abbas dismissed Hamas Islamists from government in a move that ended trade sanctions, said that simply organizing the conference itself was a signal of the opportunities that exist, despite challenges from Israeli restrictions on movement into and around the West Bank and Gaza.

"The mere convening of an international investors' conference in Palestine defines success to me," Fayyad, a former World Bank economist, told Reuters. "That's what success is about and it's a Palestinian message to the world saying 'Yes, we can.'"

PEACE PROCESS

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed holding such a conference when government donors met in December to pledge $7.7 billion in aid to the Palestinian economy as a way of bolstering negotiations with Israel on establishing a Palestinian state.

Brown's predecessor Tony Blair will be present in Bethlehem -- he is the international envoy charged with helping the Palestinians on the way to statehood and has made a priority of promoting economic development as a way of combating violence.

Many Palestinian business people complain that they are badly hampered by hundreds of Israeli military roadblocks and checkpoints across the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which Hamas seized last June, faces even bleaker prospects, with its economy squeezed between militants' rockets and an Israeli blockade.

Nonetheless, a number of delegates from Gaza will attend.

Members of official government delegations include U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt.

Much attention will focus on representatives of major Arab investors, notably from oil-rich Gulf states. On Sunday, U.S. President George W. Bush, sponsor of the peace negotiations, urged Arabs to do more to help the 4 million people in the Palestinian territories and to "invest aggressively".

Some Palestinian investors and officials stress that they want the conference to highlight problems with the Israelis.

Conference organizer Hassan Abu Libdeh said on Tuesday: "There is a Palestinian brain drain caused by the difficulties of living here. Freedom of access and movement is required to attract the qualifications and skills to improve the economy."

(Writing by Wafa Amr in Ramallah, editing by Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem)