EU wants cash infusion for W.Bank police, prisons

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - EU advisers to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's police force are seeking a 150 million euro ($221 million) infusion of funds to step up training and expand prisons as part of a Western-backed security crackdown.

The cost estimate is 10 times the 15 million euros ($22 million) committed so far under the European Union's police training program, EU officials in the region said on Thursday.

Western powers plan to hold a conference in Berlin in March or April that will focus on the funding needs of Abbas's police force and the crumbling penal system in the occupied West Bank, organizers said.

Abbas's Western-backed government launched a security crackdown in the West Bank late last year, seeking to showcase Palestinian efforts to comply with the long-stalled "road map" peace plan.

Abbas's government and some Western officials have accused Israel of undermining the effort by frequently conducting raids into areas patrolled by Palestinian forces.

Western officials say the security crackdown has also been hamstrung by a shortage of prison space to hold criminals and militants after they are arrested.

Though training has increased, Palestinian police lack basic equipment. A recent EU audit found that police in the West Bank had only 40 sets of handcuffs. The EU police training program said it began distributing 250 new sets this week.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed at a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November to try to reach a statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January.

But Olmert vowed not to implement any agreement until the Palestinians fulfil their road map obligations to rein in militants, both in the West Bank, where Abbas's government holds sway, and in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized by force in June.

The head of the EU training program, Colin Smith, told Reuters that 100 million euros ($147.4 million) in additional funding was needed in the near-to-medium term to step up training and equipping of Abbas's police force.

Smith said another 50 million euros ($73.69 million) was needed to refurbish and expand the Palestinian system of detention centers and prisons. The system's current capacity is 509 people, though it can accommodate up to 705 in emergencies, officials said.

Smith said the additional funding would expand the system's capacity to at least 3,000 detainees.

A major donors' conference in Paris in December raised $7.7 billion for the Palestinians. But Smith said none of that money was earmarked for police training and prison expansion.

Building Palestinian security forces for a future state will require an estimated $4.2 billion to $7 billion over five years, according to U.S. estimates shared with European and Israeli officials. It is unclear where that money will come from.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)