Lt. Gen. Moeller, a former B-52 bomber commander in the US Air Force, took up the reins last week. He took over from Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton who served nearly five years in the post and expects to retire from active service after 40 years.

"I hope that this man will learn from the experience and the process that General Dayton worked with," Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the Palestinian National Security Forces, told The Media Line.

"Dayton had an international plan and what he did he did well and that was to help train us," Damiri said. "The plan was a bit square, but we had no opposition to it and it was good for us."

But Damiri also sent Dayton off with criticism that he had overstepped his mandate by making political statements.

"His job was not political and if we have any anger toward him it was that he got political with statements he made in Washington," Damiri said.

Dayton, who left the region last week, avoided the media and as a general rule did not give interviews during his quiet tenure. However, comments he made at a symposium in Washington last year created waves when he was misquoted as saying that the Palestinian forces trained with US funding could turn their weapons on Israel if peace efforts failed. Dayton never made such remarks; on the contrary, he said Palestinian and Israeli security forces were "surprisingly well-coordinated."

Dayton, a trained artillery officer, oversaw the cultivation of the Palestinian National Security Service into a well-disciplined, highly-trained and loyal force that has played a major role in instilling order across the West Bank. The force is trained under US sponsorship in Jordan and deployed in five battalions inside the Palestinian Authority in coordination with Israel.

The Americans and Europeans see the force as an internal security mechanism that will one day serve a fledgling Palestinian state. Over $300 million has been devoted so far to train what is supposed to be the "next generation" of Palestinian police.

The Palestinian forces are trained in a base outside of Amman. The program, overseen by Moeller, also provides advance training for senior Palestinian commanders.

The recruits are handpicked and highly-motivated. They are also given training in human rights, proper use of force, crowd control and team work. A new battalion of 500 servicemen and women are expected to be deployed in the Palestinian Authority in mid-November, bringing to 3,600 the number of forces in the PNS.

"There work is on-going. The fact that there is law and order in towns like Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron is largely due to these forces," said a senior Western official intimately involved with the process.

Hamas has dubbed the PNS "Dayton's forces," and some in the Palestinian Authority have referred to them as "Sultat Dayton," or Dayton's Authority. But Gen. Damiri denied this.

"We never called them that. Dayton was just the name of an American officer for us," Damiri said.

A 1980 graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Moeller has chalked up more than 4,400 hours as a command pilot in bombers ranging from the B-52 and B-1 to the E-3 and E-8. His record shows that he has over 670 combat hours flown in operations Desert Storm, Enduring and Iraqi Freedom.

But more relevant to his current task is his experience as a director of Strategy, Plans and Policy at the headquarters of US Central Command. He also gained staff experience at the Secretary of the Air Force Staff Group and in the Checkmate Division of the Air Staff; in the Plans and Policy Directorate of the Joint Staff as the Deputy Director for Plans and Programs at Air Combat Command; and as the Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy for US Southern Command.

In addition, he has also served as the executive assistant to the Vice Director of the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate on the Joint Staff and to the Air Force Assistant Vice-Chief of Staff.

His largest command was as head of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing in Southwest Asia, which led more 9,000 Air Force and coalition forces.