Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the United States would continue to contribute to the UN relief fund for Palestinian refugees, even with a Hamas government in charge.
‘We want to be able to be responsive to very basic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people,’ Rice told the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee.
‘I really don't want to see us not participate in programs for the immunization of Palestinian children,’ she said, referring to one of the programs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
‘We have, I think, obligations to refugees who live in squalid conditions, and we do that through the United Nations agencies ... like this all around the world,’ Rice said.
‘So I'm quite certain that we would be segregating those funds’ from the rest of the US aid effort, when choices have to be made after a Palestinian government comes into being, she added.
The United States has been reviewing its aid programs to the Palestinians in the wake of Hamas's sweeping legislative election victory last month. An inaugural session of the Palestinian parliament is due to be held on Saturday.
Since 1950, UNRWA has supplied most of the basic services, including education, health care, social and food assistance, to Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.