AMMAN: Jordan might have deep misgivings about a US attack on Iraq but the kingdom which sat on the fence in the 1991 Gulf War would have no choice but to join a US-led campaign, officials and diplomats said on Friday.
But the pivotal US ally in the Middle East wedged between Iraq and Israel would be hoping that any military action would be brief because of fears a prolonged war could go dangerously wrong and wreak havoc in a volatile neighbourhood, they said.
“We paid a heavy price for our position in 1991, why repeat history and the situation has changed now?” a former senior government official, who requested anonymity, said.
“It’s a very tricky situation...it needs to be a surgical success that does not drag on for months and builds opposition,” he said.
Jordan sympathized with Iraq during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis sparked by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Jordan did not join a US-led coalition that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991.
The kingdom has never had the attention of US officials, legislators and politicians as it has now. Few world leaders have had as many private audiences with US President George W. Bush over the last year as the country’s monarch King Abdullah.
Jordan’s elevated role in both US military and political thinking as an important frontline ally with borders with Iraq allows it to provide logistical assistance in a US-led attack against Baghdad, Western diplomats say.
Jordan flouted strongly anti-US sentiment over Washington’s support of Israel and went further than other moderate Arab states in its public support of Bush’s “war on terror” and the military campaign against Afghanistan.
Jordan has been rewarded by a Free Trade Agreement and increased US aid.
The reward came with the biggest jump in years in a hefty military and economic aid package that will almost double economic aid to $250m in 2003.
That does not include considerable secret aid assistance to the country’s army, trained and equipped by the United States.
Politicians say Washington’s stewardship of the country’s political elite for a new status in a newly shaped Middle East under American aegis has a price tag.
Diplomats and officials say the kingdom is positioned to gain in a redrawing of the regional map that would install a pro-Western regime in Iraq but not without some short-term pain.
The kingdom is eager to protect its own national interests, in maintaining as long as possible the lucrative $1 billion annual oil trade with Iraq that has cushioned its treasury should the United States wage war and win.
Washington, with all its powerful leverage, cannot match Iraq’s generous $300 million oil grant and over $350 million worth of oil supplied in an bargain barter deal.
The United Nations allowed Jordan to get supplies from Iraq after the Gulf War on grounds it was the only affordable source.—Reuters