[Mb-civic] FW: Jordan ¹ s King Burn Bridges with Iran to Underline Arab Concerns

[Golsorkhi]

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 15:18:25 -0500
Subject: Jordan¹s King Burn Bridges with Iran to Underline Arab Concerns

Dar Al-Hayat

Jordan¹s King Burn Bridges with Iran to Underline Arab Concerns

       AP     2005/01/5

  Amman

Jordan's King Abdullah II was notably undiplomatic when he accused Iran
of meddling in Iraqi elections, and Iran was angry enough to keep its
foreign minister away from a regional meeting on Iraq Jordan is hosting
Thursday.

Abdullah's willingness to touch off an international incident
underlines just how worried Sunni Muslim Arabs are about the possible
emergence of a Shiite Muslim-dominated state in Iraq that might take
its cues from Persian Iran's Shiite theocracy.

Iraq, one of the few Arab countries with a Shiite majority, holds
elections Jan. 30. Shiites who had been suppressed under Saddam Hussein
have embraced the elections as a chance to claim political power, while
Sunnis have called for boycotts.

Abdullah "cried out loud to express Arab concern over Iran's
expansionist schemes in Iraq, but unfortunately it fell on deaf ears in
America, which does not seem to share the concern and is pushing for
holding the elections despite a planned Sunni boycott," said former
Jordanian lawmaker Hamadah Faraaneh.

King Abdullah charged in an interview last month that more than 1
million Iranians have entered Iraq, many to vote in the Jan. 30
elections, and said they were being encouraged by the Iranian
government.

Iran called Abdullah's comments an insult to the Iraqi people.

Arabs fear that a Shiite regime in Iraq could both embolden their own
Shiite communities and lead to Iraq's moving closer to mainly Shiite
Iran or adopting Iran's Islamic state.

Jordan does not have a Shiite community, except for some Iraqi families
who fled the violence in their war-battered country. The kingdom,
though, is concerned that a strict Islamic state on its eastern border
would lead to instability in the pro-Western country, a longtime U.S.
ally.

Iran announced last weekend that Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi would
not attend Thursday's meeting in Jordan. The foreign ministers of
Iraq's four other neighbors -- Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria
-- were expected.

Representatives from Iraq, Egypt and Bahrain and the UN special
representative for Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, also were expected, said
Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raja Sukiyaki.

Kharrazi's deputy, Golam Ali Khorsho, flew to Jordan Wednesday to take
part in the gathering, Jordan's official Petra news agency reported.

Zamani Nia, a member of Khorsho's delegation, said accusations of
Iranian influence in Iraq "will lead to divisions among the Iraqi
people."

"That will be very destructive" at this stage, he told reporters as he
and junior delegates to the meeting gathered at the Jordanian Foreign
Ministry to outline Thursday's agenda and draft the final communique.

Monday, Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Irani said his country didn't see
much need for the meeting.

"What are we going to talk about? We discussed everything we needed to
discuss in the November meeting," Irani added, referring to a
ministerial meeting in Egypt.

But its host, Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani Al Mulqi, said Thursday's
meeting will serve as a catalyst to "call on the feelings of all Iraqis
to vote for an Arab, not a religious Iraq."

"We hope that the Iraqis will vote for their Arab allegiance to Iraq,
not for religion," Mulqi said in an interview. "Shiites are not a
majority, Sunnis are not a minority, the Arabs are a majority and a
common denominator in Iraq."

King Abdullah had wanted Iraq's elections postponed by at least six
months to give more time for Iraqi Sunnis to decide to take part in the
polls.

Jordan and 13 other nations worldwide are hosting absentee Iraqi vote
supervised by the International Organization for Migration. The
estimated 1 million Iraqis living abroad include Sunnis, secularists
and Christians.


   ©2003 Media Communications Group
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APAP_1176726.txt/story.html

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