(BRUSSELS) - The EU has given an extra 40 million euros (59 million dollars) to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to help ensure public services, the European Commission announced Wednesday.

The funding will be used to pay salaries and pensions, support vulnerable Palestinian families and to buy fuel for Gaza's electricity power plant, the EU's executive arm said.

The money is in addition to 440 million euros which the European Commission pledged at an international donors' conference in Paris last December.

"This extra package is a clear indication that we are continuing and reinforcing our commitment to the Palestinian people," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said the EU had lived up to its earlier bigger pledge made in Paris but that "not everyone has done this".

"So we are calling upon everyone else to live up to their pledges".

The Palestinian Authority employs some 160,000 civil servants and their salaries cost 122 million dollars monthly, draining Palestinian finances largely dependent on foreign aid.

The international community has pledged billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to underpin US-backed peace talks but economic development has been stymied by Israeli restrictions on movement and access.

Delays in the payment of salaries has in the past sparked angry demonstrations by civil servants in the occupied West Bank.

The international community has paid out nearly a billion dollars in direct aid to the Palestinians in six months, officials of the International Donors' Conference for the Palestinian State said in Paris last month.

At the donors' conference in December, the international community made total pledges of 7.7 billion dollars over three years.

If the EU's fellow donors do not fulfil their pledges "the situation of the Palestinian Authority will continue to be precarious," said Ferrero-Waldner.

The commission also announced the launch of a new 37-million-euro programme funded from the original 440 million euro pot, to upgrade infrastructure in the Palestinian areas as well as security, the rule of law and power supplies.

Some of the money has also been earmarked by the Palestinian Authority and the EU to build a new security forces headquarters in Nablus, "thereby helping to strengthen the ability of the Palestinian Authority to provide security to its citizens".

The European Union is the largest donor to the Palestinian people.

Occupied Palestinian Territory - European Commission website

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