AMMAN, November 20, 2007(WAFA)) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed to donors to maintain support for the cash-strapped UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

In a letter read out at the opening of a conference of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman, Ban said “I encourage donors to maintain the favourable funding trends of the last 18 months, and thus ensure that the organisational development process is brought to fruition in due course.”

"We further acknowledge that a just and durable solution to the refugee issue should be an integral part of the peaceful resolution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict, he said in the letter.

The fate of the refugees is one of the thorniest issues in the conflict, as Israel rejects Palestinian demands to allow their return to lands abandoned during the 1948 war when the Jewish state was founded.

The two-day conference is to discuss the situation facing some 4.3 million refugees and their descendants in the care of the agency in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.