Gaza City - The Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza on Tuesday accused some in the international community of using a donors' conference in Egypt to "blackmail" the group into changing its policies.
"Some participants, especially the US administration, to a great extent made political use of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference," spokesperson Fawzi Barhum said, referring to a Gaza reconstruction conference held in Egypt on Monday.
"(They) used the need of the Gaza Strip for reconstruction to pressure Hamas and to try to blackmail it into changing its positions," he said.
He went on to accuse the donors of trying to strengthen Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose forces were driven out of Gaza when Hamas seized power in June 2007, and of "meddling in internal Palestinian affairs."
"We have warned against this politicisation and this meddling," he said.
International donors on Monday pledged 4.5 billion dollars to the Palestinians, much of it for the reconstruction of Gaza after Israel's largest-ever offensive against the territory in December and January, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.
The United States has pledged 900 million dollars, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the conference that Washington would ensure that it does not fall into the "wrong hands," referring to Hamas.
Like the European Union, the United States blacklists Hamas as a terrorist organisation and since the Gaza takeover has sought to strengthen Abbas, whose authority is now confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Abbas has said all donations should be funnelled through his government while Hamas has said the money should go either to a new national unity government or to a committee representing all Palestinian factions, neither of which has yet been created. - Sapa-AFP