15 Named to Council Set to Rule Palestinians : Mideast: New authority could take over next week from Israelis. Ten members must still be appointed.

A 15-member authority was appointed Thursday to become the Palestinians’ first government of their own in Jericho and the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian leaders said the new council could assume power with the last Israeli troop withdrawal on Wednesday.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat conveyed the names to Israel under an agreement that the remaining 10 members of the 25-person authority, whose appointments have been delayed because of political turmoil within the Palestinian ranks, will be named later.

Arafat will head the authority, which includes two women, two former deportees, members of the PLO Executive Committee and some of the most influential Palestinian leaders within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Hanan Ashrawi, Faisal Husseini and Saeb Erekat.

“It ain’t easy,” Nabil Shaath, chief PLO negotiator, said of the delay in naming the Palestinian Authority. “This is the first Cabinet the Palestinian people have ever had to run their affairs in their country.”

In the occupied territories, Palestinian police completed their initial deployment in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, the largest town so far to come under Palestinian control.

The first 23 Palestinian police arrived in Jericho, the West Bank town that will be the seat of government of the new Palestinian Authority. But 300 more officers were held up on the Allenby Bridge at the Jordan border in a delay PLO officials expected would be resolved overnight.

The arduous process of getting a new Palestinian government in place--delayed after many Palestinians expressed reluctance to serve because they oppose the peace plan and Arafat’s single-handed management style--mirrors the halting deployment of Palestinian police; both have been beset with severe logistic and economic problems in the days since the peace agreement was signed May 4.

Shaath said arriving Palestinian forces were halted for days by Yemen’s raging civil war and had to travel by bus and truck from Libya’s southern border near Chad. Further, PLO officials in Egypt were left drastically short of cash for the police deployment, prompting Shaath to send an urgent cable to Arafat over the weekend begging for more money.

Shaath told Arafat he had sent $60,000, secured through personal loans and guarantees, to finance the entry of the first police. “I cannot do more. . . . I cannot perform miracles,” Shaath told the PLO leadership.

At a news conference Thursday in Cairo, Shaath said he was trying to finance the initial deployment with only a $2-million grant from Norway in hand--less than half the first month’s salary for the 9,000-member Palestinian police force. “We really had very, very tough financial problems last week,” he said, adding that forthcoming grants will ease the crunch.

A $5-million grant from the United States to fund the police deployment is due to arrive on Tuesday; $8.6 million from the European Union is due in two to three weeks; Germany has recently pledged $350,000 and France $2.4 million worth of communications equipment. Japan has agreed to provide $10 million for building 300 housing units for incoming police.

Shaath said the naming of the initial contingent of the Palestinian Authority will allow normal business to be conducted. “With the naming of the first 15 names, which will be in place soon, we will be able to constitute the Palestinian Authority on the ground very soon,” he said. “The normal business of governing will start, and then the tougher questions will have to be answered.”

There was no indication of what persuaded some West Bank leaders, unenthusiastic about the peace agreement and with a history of strong disputes with Arafat over his leadership style, to serve. But Shaath, who is among those named to the authority, said all of those serving expect it to represent a genuine voice of democracy in the fledgling Palestinian homeland.

“In my mind, blinded rulers don’t see that democracy is the best way a ruler has to go get cooperation and acceptance from his people,” he said. “Democracy is the best way anybody has ever discovered to marshal people’s efforts without edict.”

Ashrawi, the Palestinians’ spokeswoman in peace talks with Israel in Washington, is joined on the authority by another woman, Intisar Wazir, popularly known as Om Jihad, widow of slain PLO official Abu Jihad. Shaath said he expected that several other women would be appointed when the full 25-member list is finalized.

The list is weighted with Arafat’s Fatah faction but includes at least two smaller PLO factions in an attempt to assure broad-based backing for the new government.

Earlier Thursday in Cairo, delegates from 40 nations, discussing the plight of Palestinians around the world, announced that donors have pledged more than $50 million since October to help refugees who will not immediately benefit from the autonomy plan.

But they said it will be at least two to four weeks before Israel and its neighbors begin deciding on readmission for an estimated 800,000 Palestinians displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War.