AMMAN (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday appealed to donors to maintain support for the cash-strapped UN agency for Palestinian refugees, calling for a "just and durable" solution to their fate.
"I encourage donors to maintain the favourable funding trends of the last 18 months, and thus ensure that the organisational development process is brought to fruition in due course," Ban said in a letter read out at the opening of a conference of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman.
"We further acknowledge that a just and durable solution to the refugee issue should be an integral part of the peaceful resolution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict, he said in the letter.
The fate of the refugees is one of the thorniest issues in the conflict, as Israel rejects Palestinian demands to allow their return to lands abandoned during the 1948 war when the Jewish state was founded.
The two-day conference is to discuss the situation facing some 4.3 million refugees and their descendants in the care of the agency in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Almost half of Jordan's nearly six million inhabitants are of Palestinian origin.
"Host countries are still worried about the financial situation and commitments towards the Palestinian refugees, particularly as its budget this year does not cover needed requirements," Jordanian official Wajih Azayzeh said on behalf of Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib.
He urged donor countries to assist UNRWA and help "ease the suffering of the Palestinian refugees."
According to UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd, the deficit of this year's 496-million-dollar budget is estimated at 88 million dollars.
"If donations remain the same, we predict a 100-million-dollar funding gap in the 2008 budget of 542 million dollars," she told reporters.
Last year, UNRWA launched its largest ever emergency funding appeal, asking its mainly Western donors for 246 million dollars (184 million euros) to cover aid through 2007.
The agency, which in April received 66 million euros (90 million dollars) from the European Union, has warned that severe underfunding could force it to halt food deliveries to 1.2 million people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are dependent on aid.
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