AMMAN, October 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Jordan’s Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher voiced concern Thursday, October 10, that Israel could exploit a U.S. war on Iraq to deport Palestinians to Jordan, which also fears an influx of Iraqi refugees.

"We do not want to see a situation where the Israeli government might make use of a war on Iraq in order to transfer Palestinians to Jordan," Moasher told foreign media representatives in Amman, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"While the Israelis have privately assured us this is contrary to their policies, we have not yet seen one public statement by any Israeli official stating that the transfer policy is contrary to Israeli policies," he said.

"We are not reassured by that at all," Moasher, whose country has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel, told members of the International Media Forum.

Moasher said Jordan has adopted contingency plans to prevent an influx of Iraqi refugees in the event of a U.S.-led war on its large eastern neighbor, as well as plans to block the arrival of Palestinian deportees.

The measures Jordan has taken on its borders with Iraq and the West Bank are aimed at allowing in only "those with legitimate reasons" such as people in transit or those coming to Amman for medical reasons, he said.

"We have made it clear that we are not in a position to receive any large number of refugees" from Iraq, Moasher said.

"This will be detrimental to the interests of Jordan," he said, recalling that the kingdom was swamped by 1.5 million people who transited through Jordan during the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis.

"This time the preparations that we have undertaken will make sure that these refugees, if we are faced with a large refugee problem, are catered to but not in a way that would also have them get inside Jordan," he said.

Moasher also reiterated that Jordan will not be used as a launchpad for any U.S. military strike on Baghdad and that the tiny kingdom could not afford conflicts on both its eastern and western borders.

"Jordan is in a very delicate and difficult position. We are walking an extremely tight rope," he said.

"We already have a war going on in the West Bank and we don't need another war going on to our east. It is easy for outsiders to try to solve the problem from the outside. They are not living here.

"We're living in the midst of Iraq and the Palestinian conflict, and our ability to handle two wars for a country like Jordan is extremely limited," Moasher said.

Moasher, who was Jordan's former ambassador to Washington before joining the foreign ministry in January, stressed Amman had no intention to jeopardize its ties with neither the United States nor Iraq, two key economic partners.

"This is not an easy situation to be in," he said.

"We have good excellent relations with the United States. At the same time we do have a relationship with Iraq through the fact we are getting all our oil from Iraq, trade, and through the fact that Iraq is a brotherly Arab country we would not like to see hit," he said.

Moasher stressed that Washington was "well aware of our vulnerability and well aware of our delicate position, and therefore is not asking to do anything beyond our capability."

Washington is also a key partner in the search of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said.

Moasher said he expected a "roadmap" for a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be announced by the end of October, adding that U.S. envoy William Burns would visit Amman later this month to discuss it.

The initiative led by a diplomatic "quartet" grouping the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations in cooperation with Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is aimed at securing an independent Palestinian state by 2005 living side by side with Israel.

Meanwhile, Al-Rai newspaper reported Thursday that Jordan will fly 20 Palestinians wounded in an Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis earlier this week to the kingdom for hospital treatment.

Khaled Daood, coordinator of a Jordanian program to care for Palestinians wounded in the Intifada, told the daily that King Abdullah II gave instructions for a plane to pick up the injured and fly them to Amman.

Contacts are underway to send a Jordanian plane to Egypt's El-Arish airport near the Gaza Strip to fly 20 Palestinians to the private Al-Israa Hospital in Amman for treatment, Daood told the newspaper.

A private Kuwaiti medical fund will foot the bill, he added.

Jordan has opened its hospitals to Palestinian casualties since the start of the second Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation in September 2000.