Rice to check why US cancels grants to Palestinian scholars
REYKJAVIK (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed Friday to look into a report that her department has scrapped grants to Palestinian scholars because they could not get Israeli approval to leave Gaza.
"We really have to be concerned about the future of Palestinians and the future Palestine," Rice told reporters during a visit in Iceland.
"And if you cannot engage young people and give them a complete horizon to their expectations and to their dreams, then I don't know that there would be any future for Palestine" or the people of the region, Rice said.
"It was a surprise to me and I am definitely going to look into it... I'm a big supporter of Fulbrights for people in places that have been isolated from the international community and we will see what we can do."
In a dispatch from Gaza, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune reported Friday that the State Department had withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza.
It said the decision affected seven students who had been hoping to pursue advanced degrees at US academic institutions in the fall term.
The students were not given permission to leave Gaza under an Israeli policy aimed at isolating the Palestinian territory which has been run by the Islamist extremist Hamas movement since it seized power there a year ago, it said.
Rice has been trying to broker a peace agreement following US-hosted talks in November that launched the first negotiations in seven years between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Abbas represents the moderate Fatah faction, which lost power to Hamas during bloody battles in Gaza and now is confined to the West Bank.
