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.
She also was to announce about $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority, a U.S. official said Sunday.
State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood told reporters that she would announce the donations at an international pledging conference at this Red Sea resort. The conference is seeking money for Gaza and the Palestinian economy.
Clinton also 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 Tunisa. 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 Jerusalem.
Clinton also planned to attend a meeting at Sharm el-Sheik of the so-called 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.
Obama administration officials had indicated last week that the U.S. was preparing to pledge $900 million in assistance for Gaza, but Wood”s description of the plan Sunday indicated that the only portion going directly to Gaza was $300 million.
