Donors to bolster Palestinian police at Berlin meet

By Kerstin Gehmlich

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany aims to raise $180 million to strengthen Palestinian police and legal institutions at a donors conference this week, hoping a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip can help boost the meeting.

Delegates from around 50 countries are to meet in Berlin on Tuesday to agree on funding for projects including police training and the construction of court houses, prisons and police stations in the West Bank.

"The Palestinian population must be able to feel safe on the streets again," a German diplomat said, adding strong legal and security institutions would help bring stability to the region.

Following a Palestinian donors conference in Paris last year, the Berlin meeting is seen as an additional step on the path to a two-state agreement between Israel and the Palestinians -- a goal the two sides pledged to pursue at talks in the U.S. city of Annapolis last November.

At the Paris meeting, donors pledged more than $7 billion to the Palestinians over the next three years. German diplomats say the Berlin conference is an opportunity to lock in some of those pledges to concrete projects.

"We hope we can strengthen and speed up the process," said the German diplomat, requesting anonymity.

The "Quartet" of Middle East peace mediators -- comprising the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- is set to discuss political developments on the sidelines of the donors conference.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will meet in Berlin, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joining via video-link.

GAZA TRUCE, SYRIA TALKS

A Gaza truce went into effect on Thursday and Israel said it had begun easing its economic blockade of the strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 1.5 million. But both sides have voiced doubts about how long the ceasefire will hold.

Israel also concluded a second round of indirect talks with Syria last week, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for peace talks with Lebanon.

At the Berlin meeting, Germany hopes to raise donor contributions of $183.6 million for projects proposed by the Palestinian government under President Mahmoud Abbas.

In its funding request, the Palestinian interior ministry said that across the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP), only 30 computers existed and more than 7,000 police officers shared a handful of helmets and other protective gear. Many police stations and prisons had been destroyed over the past years.

"Where once stood organized and operational prisons, now lie piles of rubble," it said in the funding document.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are both set to attend the meeting.

(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Angelika Stricker in Berlin)