March 17, 2002	Sunday	Muharram 2, 1423

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PARIS, March 16: Jordan’s King Abdullah II says he has let it be known to the United States that to attack Iraq now would result in nothing less than a “disaster.”

In a full-page interview with French daily Le Figaro, he said during meeting with visiting US Vice President Dick Cheney in Amman, he made it clear to Mr Cheney that the Middle East “cannot support two wars at once — the Israeli-Palestine conflict and a US attack on Iraq”.

“To attack Baghdad now,” he said, “would be a disaster. The security and stability of our region would not resist such an additional war.

“It would be better,” King Abdullah II said he told Mr Cheney, “to give a new chance to talks between Iraq and the United Nations. Talks which would take place parallel to an effort by the international community to pressure Israel and the Palestinians to take up negotiations again and thus break the cycle of violence.”

“Happily,” he added, “the new resolution 1397 has confirmed the legitimacy of our efforts to bring about a settlement of the conflict. Also, we are encouraged by the return of (Anthony) Zinni, the US emissary, because his presence should encourage a resumption of the peace process.”

As regards the Arab League summit in Beirut later this month, King Abdullah said he did not believe it would produce any important results.

“It’s not in Beirut that we’re going to find a solution.

At Beirut, we only want to let Israel know that we believe that peace is possible. But that it is not the Palestinians who can guarantee the future security of Israel, but the Arab world as a whole.”

“And,” he continued, “the Arab countries are ready to give this assurance if Israel decides to settle its differences with its immediate neighbours, that is, the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon. This initiative shouldn’t be seen as something new, because already in 1991, at the Madrid conference, the Arabs had given the green light to negotiations. The Arab summit is just a way of recalling that the integration of Israel into the region is an inescapable precondition of any settlement.”