The new Palestinian emergency cabinet met for the first time today since Hamas' bloody seizure of Gaza, with signs a crippling Western aid freeze may soon be lifted.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced that the 27-nation bloc - the biggest donor to the Palestinians - would provide some direct funds to the new government and was seeking a way to send aid to impoverished Gaza.
New prime minister Salam Fayyad, a respected US-educated economist, chaired a nearly two-hour meeting of his 12-member cabinet in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah with pledges to work to heal the deep Palestinian rift.
The international community has welcomed the new cabinet and is widely expected to lift the 15-month economic and diplomatic boycott imposed after Hamas came to power in 2006.
'There will be a direct relationship, economically also with the government', Solana told reporters in Luxembourg.
'There will be a part of the money that will be direct,' he added, calling on Fayyad to put together a budget able to help Gaza as well as the West Bank, home to about 2.5 million Palestinians.
