Abu Mazen, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said in Abu Dhabi on November 15 that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fully supports the Palestinian people's legal rights to set up an independent state.

"We are extremely pleased with the visit to be paid by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, minister of information and culture, to the Palestinian territories," the official told the Emirates News Agency (WAM).

Abdullah's visit Sunday is an embodiment of the UAE's support to the nascent Palestinian state, he added. Abdullah will be the first UAE official to visit the Palestinian self-rule areas.

During his visit, Abdullah will lay the foundation stone for a 50 million-US-dollar construction project funded by UAE President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

The Zayed City project will be implemented in two phases in three years at Bet Lahya, north of Gaza. It will contribute in a big way toward solving a number of Palestinian economic and social difficulties, WAM said.

Abdullah, currently in Bahrain, said on Monday that the visit is to familiarize himself with the situation there. He also urged all the Arabs to give both moral and material support to the Palestinian people.

The Middle East peace talks are at a critical stage which requires all Arab and Islamic countries to extend the necessary political backing to the Palestinians, he said.

He added that the final status talks will be meaningless unless the Jerusalem issue is put at the center of negotiations and a solution is reached to the satisfaction of the Arab and Islamic world.

Sheikh Abudllah led an Arab campaign in September against Walt Disney over an Israeli exhibit which depicted Jerusalem as the Jewish state's capital.

Abu Mazen arrived in the UAE earlier in the day. He had a discussion with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on bilateral relations and the latest developments in the Palestinian-Israeli final-status talks.