From The Washington Post By Ellen Knickmeyer and Glenn Kessler*, Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, March 15, 2008:
MUWAQQAR, Jordan -- A U.S.-funded program to train and equip Palestinian security forces is mired in ...differences between Israelis and the Americans over what military capabilities those forces should have once deployed in the territories.
..... Because of Israeli concerns, the group of more than 1,000 Palestinian trainees has not been outfitted with pledged body armor or light-armored personnel carriers. ....
...In unveiling his 2003 blueprint for Middle East peace, President Bush said building an effective Palestinian security force was essential to achieving a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
Touring the region last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the goal is to create "a professional and capable Palestinian security force" in part to counter Hamas, the armed Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and does not recognize Israel.
The forces being trained here in a desert camp one hour from Jordan's capital, Amman, are under the Palestinian Authority, run by...Fatah....
...U.S. contract workers and Jordanian security forces are training about 600 members of the Fatah-dominated National Security Forces, or NSF, in a 16-week course. About 425 members of the elite presidential guard, which answers to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, are undergoing eight weeks of training....
...But doubts in Israel and in the U.S. Congress about the loyalties of Abbas's forces have slowed the arrival of the program's funding.....
...The Israeli government has insisted that the Palestinian security forces be trained and equipped as a police force rather than an army that could threaten the Jewish state......
...Israeli officials have blocked delivery of body armor to Palestinian forces of a grade capable of stopping rounds from the M-16 assault rifles used by Israeli troops...."You never know when these things are going to be used against you," Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry, said of armor and weapons....
*Kessler reported from Washington, the Middle East and Europe. Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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