Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070548
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: AMMAN, JORDAN LENGTH: Medium
In an emotional speech Wednesday night, the Jordanian leader urged a cease-fire in the war next door that has wrought hardship on his people.
"This is a war against all Arabs and Muslims and not only against Iraq," said the king, long a bulwark of pro-Western moderation in the region.
His speech echoed the strong pro-Iraqi sentiments of his 3.4 million subjects, many of them Palestinians.
Hussein offered the Iraqis "our love and our pride as they defend us all." But he did not suggest sending military aid or breaking the U.N. embargo on trade with Iraq.
His pause at that line may be enough to satisfy the Western donors who now keep Jordan's economy afloat and see its stability as crucial to the region.
But the sudden shift in tone, mirroring the mood of the Jordanian people, was an ominous signal for allied forces that Arab opinion is shifting in favor of their Iraqi enemy.
The change was especially dramatic because the king, a canny survivor of 37 years on the throne, used potent Islamic and Arab imagery to flay some of his most crucial Arab allies of recent years for siding with the West.
Before the air war began, Jordan professed neutrality and purchased oil from Iraq, claiming it was not violating the U.N. embargo.
For refusing to join the anti-Iraq coalition, Saudi punished Jordan with a cutoff of oil and aid - and banned most Jordanian imports.
In recent days, Jordanian oil tank trucks have been bombed and strafed by allied warplanes as they headed for home on Iraqi roads. Seven Jordanian truck drivers have reportedly been killed.
Hussein accused the allies of trying to "deprive us of our basic needs" - punishment for Jordanian attempts to mediate a peaceful settlement to the Persian Gulf crisis following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
"The alternative to a cease-fire This is a war against all Arabs and Muslims and not only against Iraq King Hussein of Jordan is the destruction of Arabs and Muslims, their humiliation, their exploitation, the trampling of their honor, pride and legitimate hopes," said Hussein.
In the United States, President Bush instantly rejected the cease-fire call. He reiterated that Saddam Hussein must first begin "a credible, unilateral withdrawal" from Kuwait.
"I'm afraid that we have a major disagreement on that," Bush said of the king's accusation that the United States was engaged in an unjust war against his Iraqi neighbors. "It's not true."
Asked if he still planned to offer refugee assistance to Jordan, the president said: "We've tried to make clear with Jordan that we have no argument with Jordan. I think they've made a mistake to align themselves so closely to [Iraq's] Saddam Hussein against the rest of the world."
Bush expressed distress Wednesday over a speech the king delivered only hours after Secretary of State James Baker had offered assurances that U.S. aid to the Arab nation would not be cut.
Earlier Wednesday, Baker told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that allied forces bombed truck convoys headed to Jordan from Iraq because of "credible information" they were carrying Scud missiles.
He said Jordan was not a target of the attacks even though it had purchased some oil from Iraq in defiance of a worldwide economic boycott imposed by the U.N. Security Council last year after Iraq occupied Kuwait.
The speech also stirred concern in Israel. A government official, refusing to be identified, said it was "the most comprehensive, and most aggressively pro-Iraqi speech" made by Hussein since the start of the war.
"How shamed will be the Arabs who let Arab blood be spilled in this unjust war," he said.
"When Arab and Islamic lands are offered as bases . . . to launch attacks to destroy Muslim Iraq . . . any Arab or Muslim can realize the magnitude of this crime committed against his religion and his nation."
That insult was directed at the strict Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan's chief aid donor for more than a decade.
"The real purpose behind this destructive war . . . is to destroy Iraq and rearrange the area" under "foreign hegemony," Hussein said.
He said the result would be worse than the British-French agreement after World War I that divided the Arab world into small, relatively weak states.
Without mentioning Bush by name, Hussein denounced his claim that the conflict is a "just war" fought to defend a new world order.
"The talk about a new world order whose early feature is the destruction of Iraq . . . leads us to wonder about the identity of this order and instills in us doubts about its nature," he said.
by CNB