Germany is hoping countries will commit to donating $184 million during a Tuesday conference designed to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's police force and court system - improvements officials say are needed to build a Palestinian state. The one-day "Berlin conference in support of Palestinian civil security and the rule of law" aims to produce "concrete commitments" from the international community, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the delegates at Germany's Foreign Ministry in her opening address. "It has a very special task: to be a help in building a Palestinian state," she said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (web|news|bio), Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and officials from Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (web|news) were all in attendance, along with international Mideast envoy Tony Blair and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Representatives of more than 40 countries are expected.

Leading the Palestinian delegation, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said he saw the conference as a sign of "enthusiastic international consensus in support of the Palestinian people for freedom."

Still, he pointed to a Tuesday morning raid in the West Bank town of Nablus as an example of the hurdles ahead. Israeli troops killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the raid, while a neighbor said a Palestinian bystander was also shot to death by troops.

The raid is "an example of the kind of activity that has to stop and has to stop immediately and promptly if we are going to succeed in providing security to our people," Fayyad said.

German diplomats have put the amount of money being sought at $184 million over three years, of which $56 million is intended to go to the judicial system. The bulk of the funding was expected to come from the $7.4 billion promised to help Palestinians at a donors' conference in Paris last year.

Over the coming months, the European Union aims to expand its 32-strong police mission to the Palestinians to 70 training personnel - including judges, prosecutors and other legal experts.

The so-called EUPOL COPPS mission has been bolstering a now 900-strong civil police force. It plans to widen its focus to improving jails and court operations.

Officials said strengthening Palestinian internal security was essential to wider success in peace efforts.

"Without security on the ground for the Palestinians, but also for the Israeli side, the overarching process ... ultimately cannot be successful," German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said.

The head of the EU police mission to the Palestinians, Colin Smith, said last week that money was needed whether or not Israel and the Palestinians meet their goal of reaching a peace deal by the end of the year, which would lead to the setting up of a Palestinian state.

"There would be no point creating a Palestinian state in six months' time if it doesn't have security organizations, judiciary and the institutions that it needs to be a state," Smith said.

"If the political process goes well, then I think there's clearly a need for the institutions," he added. "If the political process runs into difficulties, then there is still a need to develop the Palestinian security, Palestinian police and criminal justice sector."

Funding is needed to build forensic laboratories and prisons and to install data and communications networks. Money is also needed to build and run courthouses.

Smith said the court system was seriously backed up, with 80 percent of prisoners in Palestinian jails waiting to be sentenced.

The funding is for the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank. The authority does not control the Gaza Strip, taken over last year by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Following the conference, Rice and Lavrov plan to attend a meeting of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, made up of Russia, the United States, the U.N. and the European Union.

Written By GEIR MOULSON

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