UN agency says won't scale back Hamas govt contacts

GAZA, Apr 12 (Reuters) The American head of the U.N. agency aiding Palestinian refugees said today her agency will not scale back contacts with the new Palestinian government and will meet with Hamas leaders as part of its aid work.

Senior U.N. officials said earlier this week that the United Nations had advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, said she had not been advised to restrict her agency's contacts to avoid Hamas political leaders.

AbuZayd said her agency planned to meet this weekend with the Palestinian minister of refugees. The minister, Atef Odwan, is a senior Hamas leader. An UNRWA spokesman said AbuZayd would personally attend the meeting with Odwan.

John Ging, head of UNRWA's Gaza operations, met recently with Palestinian Interior Minister Saeed Seyam, Seyam's office said. Seyam is a senior Hamas leader who used to work as a teacher for UNRWA.

''It does not make sense to reduce contacts when you are asked to increase your activity,'' AbuZayd told a news briefing in Gaza. ''We have no problem with our contacts as they have been in the past and they will continue in the future.'' ''We might have to have even more contacts than in the past,'' she added.

U.N. ADVICE An UNRWA spokesman said the agency was not diverging from any advice it had received from U.N. headquarters ''regarding what it needs to do as a humanitarian agency''.

Already a major contributor to UNRWA, the Bush administration plans to increase the humanitarian aid it funnels to the Palestinians through the U.N. agency and others.

The Bush administration has frozen direct aid to the Palestinian Authority and has barred U.S. officials from having any contact with members of the new Hamas government, including at the technocrat level.

AbuZayd said donor countries who decided to cut aid to the Hamas-led government should be aware of the consequences of their decision on the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the West Bank, where a total of 3.8 million Palestinians live.

''We already are in a bad situation, if the situation is made worse whatever assurances they are giving for refugees that is not enough, we have to have assurances for other things, for the non-refugees,'' she said.

UNRWA was specifically set up in 1950 to support Palestinians who had fled homes on lands which became part of the new state of Israel in 1948. The agency lists more than 1.6 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

At the height of a Palestinian revolt, Israel accused UNRWA of ignoring use of its vehicles and facilities by militants. UNRWA denied this.

Relations plummeted after UNRWA's then commissioner-general, Peter Hansen, said in an October 2004 television interview: ''I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll.'' REUTERS SI PC1929