OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, April 11, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Following in the foot steps of the US and EU, the United Nations on Tuesday, April 11, advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting Palestinian cabinet ministers.

"Contacts will continue at levels to ensure the continuation of humanitarian programs," a UN official told Reuters.

UN officials said the agencies would maintain contacts with rank-and-file officials in the new Hamas-led government, while avoiding ministers and senior officials.

The United Nations is a member of the Quartet of Middle East mediators with the United States, the European Union and Russia that champions the roadmap peace plan.

The new restrictions are likely to boost US-led efforts to isolate the new Hamas-led government.

The United States has already cut off funding to the new government and has ordered its diplomats and contractors to cut off contacts with the new ministers.

Canada has also decided to suspend aid and contacts with the Palestinian government.

In another development, Russia and the Arab League blasted cutting off aid to the Palestinian government.

"We are convinced that refusing help to the Palestinians due to the election of Hamas and the formation of a government from members of the movement is a mistake," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency.

He asserted that it was "necessary to work and not declare a boycott" of the new cabinet.

"Hamas should fulfill the conditions set by the Quartet mediators, recognize Israel and sit down at the negotiating table. But for that it's necessary to work with them," Lavrov said.

The Arab League also condemned as "reprehensible" a decision by the EU to suspend aid to the Palestinian government.

"This decision is totally unacceptable," the League's assistant secretary general for Palestinian affairs, Mohammed Sobeih, told reporters in Cairo.

"It's strange and reprehensible ... that the Palestinian people are punished for being undemocratic and also punished for exercising democracy."

Foreign ministers of the 25-nation bloc, which is by far the Palestinian Authority's biggest donor, confirmed the aid suspension at a meeting in Luxembourg Monday.

Sobeih, himself a Palestinian, said aid cutting "falls within a policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian people."

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa had sent urgent appeals to member states to honor pledges of substitute financing for the Palestinian Authority made at a summit in Khartoum last month.