EU/Hamas

     European Union foreign ministers backed an Arab peace initiative on Saturday and agreed to engage with ministers of the new Palestinian national unity government who are not members of the Islamist Hamas movement. Today, the Europeans agreed they will judge the new government by its actions rather than its words and to progressively help it build up credible government institutions,the spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs,Cristina Gallach said. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said developments in the Middle East are pointing toward a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world for the first time in decades. "The Arab League for the first time in many years has assumed the responsibility to be more active in the peace process," he said. The EU ministers, meeting in Bremen, also agreed to keep in place, for now, an ad-hoc aid scheme, overseen by the World Bank, that in the past year has funneled hundreds of millions of euros directly to poor Palestinians - bypassing the previous Palestinian government led by the Islamic militant Hamas. The emergence of that government a year ago led international aid to the Palestinian Authority to dry up. The EU cobbled together a so-called Temporary International Mechanism that hands out monthly cash payments to support 150,000 or so destitute Palestinian families, media reported.(18,29)