Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 9, 1991 TAG: 9102090137
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"I have some concern now about what appears to be a shift in the Jordanian position," Bush said. The American people, he added, "don't understand some of the rhetoric coming out of there."
"We've always had a historically good relationship with Jordan, but this complicates things," Bush said. "He seems to have moved over, way over, into Saddam Hussein's camp."
The president's remarks followed the announcement Thursday that the administration was reviewing its $55 million in 1991 foreign aid to Jordan in response to a speech this week in which the Jordanian leader assailed the United States and backed Iraq.
Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, said that Friday's harder line toward Jordan grew out of a closer review by the president of the king's speech.
Fitzwater said the king's speech had made it clear "that Jordan has declared his allegiance to Iraq. The statements by King Hussein were very precise in terms of his attack on the United States."
Administration officials say they understand what the king seems to be doing, which is positioning himself for the postwar Middle East.
They believe he has concluded, wrongly, that when the war is over Arab radicals will take revenge against all Arab leaders who joined with the United States in destroying Iraq.
Therefore, through his tilt toward Baghdad and denunciations of the United States, the king is trying to buy himself some life insurance, these officials say.
Given the king's life history, this is not altogether irrational. As a 15-year-old prince, Hussein was at the side of his grandfather, King Abdullah, in 1951 when Abdullah was shot to death by a Palestinian who accused him of selling out the Palestinian cause after the 1948 Middle East war.
After the 1967 Middle East war, King Hussein's own throne was challenged by Palestinian radicals, who wanted to sweep him and other Arab leaders aside for their failure to defeat Israel.
Administration officials say they are ready to accept a certain amount of posturing by the king, who has provided some useful intelligence on Iraq and tacit military cooperation since the gulf war began. But they felt his speech this week crossed a line and that unless they yanked him back he might be lost indefinitely from the pro-American Arab camp.
Although Jordan is not a militarily powerful or rich country, it plays a crucial geopolitical role in the Middle East from Washington's point of view. The country is often taken for granted, until officials begin to contemplate what the region might be like without it.
Jordan under Hussein has served as a stable, moderate and pro-American buffer between a variety of contending parties.
It is a buffer between Israel and Iraq, between Syria and Saudi Arabia, between Egypt and Iraq and between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which at different times has tried to take over Jordan for itself.
A senior administration official said Bush's remarks Friday were calculated to put the king on notice that as far as Washington was concerned he was in danger of changing from one of America's oldest Arab friends to one of its newest Arab foes.
Not only is the United States reviewing its own foreign aid to Jordan, but administration officials also said they were stopping all of their efforts to solicit money from American allies to ease Jordan's war-induced economic crisis.
Administration officials fear that when the ground war against Iraqi troops in Kuwait begins there could be even more of an anti-American outcry in the Arab world, and they want to keep Jordan at least neutral in order to minimize any political fallout.
The king still has Arab nationalist credentials, and if he denounces the Americans along with Iraq, it could not only embarrass the pro-American Arab governments, but also lay the groundwork for a postwar inter-Arab cold war that would make any peacemaking in the region more difficult.
"We are not worried that he is going to make Saddam legitimate," one administration official said of King Hussein. "But there is a war going on now. Americans are at risk, and what the king is doing and saying is putting them more at risk. That is not the way friends behave - even friends who are under pressure.
by CNB