AMMAN, Aug 12: US-Jordan military exercises began on Monday in the southern desert part of the country amid heightened tensions over a possible pre-emptive US attack on Iraq, officials and diplomats said on Monday.

But they said an undisclosed number of US Marines who landed offshore from two vessels docked at the Red Sea port of Aqaba were engaged in pre-scheduled annual training that was not linked to any possible US military assault against Iraq.

“The Jordanian army is undertaking military manoeuvres with a US military unit within the programme of annual exercises that are executed by the army with a number of friendly and brotherly states,” a government spokesman told Reuters.

US media reports have in recent weeks quoted military planners as saying Washington was considering Jordan as a base for staging air and commando raids against Iraq.

Officials have vehemently denied the country was involved in any secret plans to use its territory or that it would allow US troops any facilities.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan said the exercises have been held annually since 1997 and were long-planned, “independent of anything else going on in the region”. Jordanian military sources declined to give details about the joint exercises, only saying they were taking place in desert terrain in the south of the country for two weeks.

“The US forces will leave after the conclusion of the two-week training period,” one military official said.

Diplomats say the timing of the exercises at a time of heightened US war rhetoric against Iraq will only fuel growing domestic pressure by vocal Islamist and leftist groups in Jordan who seek a firmer anti-US stance by the government.—Reuters