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U.S., Jordan Agree To Talks Modifying Iraq Sanctions
contributions by Tareq Ayyoub
WASHINGTON & AMMAN, April 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States and Jordan on Wednesday agreed to hold expert-level talks on U.S. proposals to modify U.N. sanctions on Iraq, the State Department said.
"They agreed that there should be some expert discussions in the coming weeks," spokesman Richard Boucher said after a formal meeting and working lunch between Jordan's King Abdullah II and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Though Boucher had no details about when the talks might take place, he said they would cover precise ways in which sanctions could be eased on civilian goods while boosting those on military items and technology.
On a Middle East tour in February that included Jordan, Powell said he had received support for those proposals and despite last month's Arab League summit call for a lifting of all sanctions that Abdullah signed onto, Washington insists it still has support for the changes.
Among the modifications being suggested by the United States are ways to entice Iraq's neighbors, including Jordan, to cut down rampant illegal smuggling by offering incentives to strictly enforce embargoes on key items.
The proposals could include placing U.N. monitors just outside Iraqi borders to monitor trade and drawing up a list of oil companies officially allowed by the United Nations to buy Iraqi crude.
Jordan's support for these initiatives will be critical in both winning their approval from Arab states and the United Nations but also in enforcing them.
Abdullah and Powell also spent time discussing efforts to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the peace table, Boucher said.
"The United States and Jordan both want to do all we can to help calm the situation, help the parties end the violence, re-establish normal lives for the people of the region, and get back on a path to peace," he said.
The monarch and the secretary were "looking at what we could each do to help make that happen," Boucher added.
Abdullah, who is to meet President George W. Bush next week, is the second moderate Arab leader to visit Washington this month following Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who saw Bush and Powell on Monday.
Washington sees the support of both leaders, whose countries are the only Arab states to have full diplomatic relations with Israel, as essential in pressing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to take steps to end the more than six months of deadly violence it claims Arafat and the Palestinians are responsible for, that has engulfed the region.
In addition, Powell and Abdullah also discussed U.S.-Jordanian ties and the importance of economic reform and a bilateral free trade agreement that was signed in October between Abdullah and then-U.S. president Bill Clinton but is still awaiting ratification by Congress.
The pact - the first between the United States and an Arab country - requires both countries to enforce their respective labor and environmental laws as well as stimulate trade and investment.
It eliminates barriers to trade in goods and services between the two countries over 10 years and Amman has high hopes it will bolster Jordan's ailing economy.
Meanwhile in Jordan, Information Minister Taleb Rifai on Wednesday said it was normal for "some" Jordanians to respond to harsh criticism recently launched by senior Iraqi officials against the Hashemite family in Jordan.
But Rifai, speaking to journalists during his weekly briefing, said that such matters should not have any impact on Jordanian-Iraqi relations.
The minister was commenting on Jordan's reaction to recent criticism by Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan during meetings with a Jordanian delegation in Baghdad last month and a speech by President Saddam Hussein's in the opening session of the Arab summit read by deputy chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Council Ezzat Ibrahim.
News reports appearing in local and weekly newspapers said that Yassin criticized Jordan for failing to undertake necessary measures to lift sanctions on Baghdad and claimed that Jordan hosts U.S. troops near it's border with Iraq.
Saddam's summit speech included implicit "criticism" of Jordan's royal family in which he called the Hashemite family who ruled Iraq ahead of the 1958 revolution, led by the Baath Socialist Party, as "collaborators with colonialism".
"It is normal to have [Jordanian] popular reaction to these statements," Rifai said. But "we in Jordan have no intention to have our relations with Iraq to develop against the interests of the two countries," the minister added.
He indicated that Iraqi officials have denied statements attributed to Yassin.
Rifai also refuted claims that Jordan has granted U.S. troops military facilities near Jordan's borders with Iraq.
The minister, however, did lash out at Iraq, blaming it for failing to accept a compromise reached during the Arab summit to end what has been known as "Iraq-Kuwait position".
He said that Jordan exerted efforts to resolve the issue, but that the Iraqi delegation did not agree to the proposals.
Rifai's comments came one day after a similar statement by King Abdullah II in which he criticized Iraq for refusing to accept the compromise.
"Iraq lost a golden opportunity," Abdullah told the Financial Times on Tuesday.
"The Kuwaitis and Saudis went much farther than any Arab country expected them to," Abdullah said ahead of his expected meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington next week.
Arab leaders who had worked hard for a last minute deal felt "bitter and frustrated at the Iraqis' rejection of the resolution," Abdullah added.
The King pledged to continue efforts to resolve the Kuwait-Iraq position, adding that the mere fact that Iraqis, Kuwaitis and Saudis sat around the same table "and nobody walked out" was an important step forward.
During the Arab summit, foreign ministers failed to convince Iraq to accept a "moderate formula" which included a call to lift the 11-year-old sanctions and the resumption of commercial flights to and from Baghdad if Iraq were to provide guarantees that it's 1990 invasion of Kuwait would not be repeated.
Rifai indicated that any rapprochement in the Kingdom's ties with Kuwait would not be at the cost of its relations with Iraq, Jordan's major trade partner.
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