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BERLIN-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.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
