Palestinians to get first full wages in 17 months

RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 2 (Reuters) President Mahmoud Abbas's emergency government will pay all Palestinian Authority workers -- excluding those who report directly to Hamas -- their first full wages in 17 months, officials said today.

The payments will go to nearly 140,000 Palestinian Authority workers, including tens of thousands in Gaza which Hamas seized by force on June 14.

''There will be full salaries for all civil and security sector (employees),'' Riyad al-Malki, Abbas's minister of information, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the emergency cabinet.

But some 23,000 workers hired under Islamist Hamas after it won 2006 elections will be excluded, said a senior aide to Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led government that Abbas dismissed after the violent June takeover.

Abbas has made some limited payments to workers since Israel froze tax revenue transfers and Western powers imposed economic sanctions after Hamas's election win, a move that pushed the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial collapse.

But according to Malki, full wages have not been paid by the Authority since February 2006.

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister and finance minister in Abbas's Western-backed emergency government, has pledged to pay those who return to work in Gaza as long as they follow its instructions -- and not those of Hamas.

Members of the Fatah-dominated security services in Gaza have also been asked by their commanders in the West Bank to stay at home as a condition for receiving their salaries.

Haniyeh aide Mohammad al-Madhoum said the exclusion of those hired by Hamas was ''shameful'' and urged Fayyad to reconsider.

Among those who will be excluded are nearly 6,000 members of Hamas's elite Executive Force, which played a key role in the fighting in Gaza that routed troops loyal to Fatah.

Israel transferred to Fayyad on Sunday nearly 120 million dollars -- approximately 20 per cent of frozen Palestinian tax revenues, senior Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said.

Israel, which collects taxes and duties for goods entering the Palestinian territories, will also automatically transfer to Fayyad tens of millions of dollars per month in newly-collected tax revenues, Israeli officials said.

Along with a European Union mechanism that pays nearly million a month to civil servants and pensioners, Fayyad should have enough money to cover the rest of the Palestinian Authority's nearly 120 million dollars-a-month wage bill. But he may struggle to pay full arrears any time soon, officials said.

Reuters RKM GC2255