SHEIK, Egypt, March 02, SPA -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first foray into Middle East politics as U.S. secretary of state, arrived at an international donors conference Monday with a U.S. pledge of about $300 million in humanitarian aid for the war-torn Gaza Strip, Associated Press reported. She also was to announce about $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority. «We have worked with the Palestinian Authority to install safeguards that will ensure our funding is only used where and for whom it is intended and does not end up in the wrong hands,» Clinton told the conference, according to excerpts of her prepared remarks provided in advance by the State Department. Clinton stressed that the Obama administration is taking a wide-angle view of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza following weeks of attacks by Israel in response to Hamas rockets fired into southern Israel. «Our response to today's crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace,» she said. «By providing humanitarian aid to Gaza we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized, a state that is a responsible partner, is at peace with Israel and its Arab neighbors and is accountable to its people,» she added. Clinton scheduled one-on-one meetings with several of her Mideast counterparts, including Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and foreign ministers from Morocco, Algerian, Libya and Tunisia. She also was to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. After the daylong conference she was flying to Al-Quds city (Jerusalem). Clinton also planned to attend a meeting at Sharm el-Sheik of the Quartet of international mediating nations _ the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia _ seeking to forge progress toward peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
