Palestinians to get interim aid

Condoleeza Rice is my favourite politician. This, it must be admitted, is not a heavily-contested title. I hope she changes her mind about running for President, if only because it would be hilarious to watch the multi-culti, feminist Left handle a Republican President who is black, female and demonstrably more intelligent than any of them.

A woman of her intelligence and integrity must of course understand that aid routed through the EU will not - as promised by Kofi Annan - be "fully accountable".

The EU's own accounts have been "qualified" by its auditors for as long as anyone can remember. The EU is at best financially incompetent and seems far more likely to be utterly corrupt. Neil Kinnock, a former anti-EU firebrand whose snout was, by the end, shaped to the bottom of the EU trough was the man appointed to sort the problem out. You will recall that he fired the officlal responsible for the accounts, not because she was responsible for the gaping holes in them which cause the auditors such problems, but because she went public about them. Having shot the messenger, thus sending a message to any other officials who might actually want to protect taxpayers' funds, he considered the problem solved.

The idea that the EU is capable of ensuring that this aid finds its way to needy Palestinians rather than into the hands of the Hamas butchers is quite ridiculous. The best we can hope for is that so much of it adheres to the sticky fingers of EU officialdom that there is little left for the purchase of Semtex.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Palestinians to get interim aid