By Reuters Last update - 18:31 18/09/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1022502.html

About 500 members of a security force loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas crossed into Jordan on Thursday for U.S.-funded training, the second
such battalion to do so.

Washington wants to train the backbone of a Palestinian gendarmerie that
would underpin any future state.

The battalion from Abbas's National Security Force will undergo training for
four months in police tactics, riot control and human rights, officials
said.

An official at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge, between the occupied
West Bank and Jordan, said the battalion crossed without incident.

It is the second battalion from the NSF to undergo U.S.-funded training,
which is part of the Bush administration's push for an Israeli-Palestinian
peace deal this year. The first battalion returned to the West Bank in late
May.

The U.S. training program has fuelled tensions between Abbas's secular Fatah
faction and its rival Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last
year.

Washington provides non-lethal equipment to Abbas's forces. Arab allies
provide guns and ammunition with Israeli consent.

U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials assert that Hamas receives security
equipment and training from Iran and other Islamist allies.

The training is conducted by Jordanian police at the Jordanian International
Police Training Center near Amman.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas launched statehood talks last
November with the goal of reaching a deal by year's end but the talks have
shown little progress.

Olmert, poised to step down as premier following his party's election of a
new leader on Wednesday, has insisted that a Palestinian state will not be
established until Abbas regains control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas and
reins in militants in the West Bank, where his government is based.