From the Arab News today, on Jerusalem:
Jordan to Participate in UNESCO Meeting on Aqsa
Abdul Jalil Mustafa and Agencies
AMMAN, 13 January 2008 — Jordanian experts will take part in a UNESCO-sponsored meeting due to be held in Jerusalem today for evaluation of an Israeli plan to build a bridge leading to Al-Magharebah gate near Al-Aqsa Mosque, Minister of Information Affairs and Communication Nasser Judeh said yesterday.
“Jordan’s participation in the meeting has the aim of reasserting the country’s attitude that considers Al-Magharebah gate an integral part of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, an area which is under the exclusive responsibility of the Jordanian Religious Endowments Department,” Judeh said.
Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 six-day war along with the rest of the West Bank. However, under the peace treaty, which Jordan concluded with Israel in 1994, the Jewish state acknowledged the Hashemite Kingdom’s right to look after the Islamic and Christian holy shrines in East Jerusalem. Jordan has repeatedly considered Israeli excavations near Al-Aqsa Mosque as violations of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan’s biggest political party, yesterday urged the government to unequivocally reject US President George W Bush’s remarks asserting Israel as a Jewish state. “We are awaiting a clear Jordanian official attitude that rejects Israel as a Jewish state and sticks to the Palestinian people’s right to an independent and a fully sovereign state as well as to the right of refugees” to return to their homes, the IAF official spokesman Rhayyel Gharaibeh said in a statement.
During his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories earlier this week, Bush advocated Israel as homeland for the Jewish people, a remark virtually excluding the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes they were forced to quit upon Israel’s foundation in 1948.
The UN General Assembly’s resolution 194 provided for the return of Palestinians to their homes or compensating those who choose not to return. “Bush’s hostile statement represents one of the stages of the liquidation of the Palestinian question, the offshoots of which will affect the rights of the Palestinian and Jordanian peoples as well as neighboring Arab countries,” Gharaibeh said.
“The recognition of the Jewish nature of Israel heralds a new aggression as well as a new chapter of the conspiracy against Arab rights,” he added.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister said yesterday Iraq hopes to conclude by July a pact with the United States that lays the basis for long-term strategic ties between the two countries and defines the legal status of US troops. Hoshyar Zebari said technical talks would be launched in Baghdad later this month on the alliance that lays the basis of ties once the one-year extension of the UN authorization for the US-led forces in Iraq expires at the end of 2008.
“We will get by the end of the month into decisive and crucial negotiations to reach the long-term cooperation and friendship agreement. It will define the relationship in all its aspects,” Zebari told Reuters in Amman. “This agreement is very important for Iraq and the region... We don’t want to pre-empt events and matters will be decided in the coming talks and we hope to conclude by July,” he added.
US President George Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki signed a declaration of principles in November to guide negotiations toward the security pact. Bush said yesterday that America’s new strategy had reversed Iraq’s descent into mayhem and the United States was on track to complete the withdrawal of 20,000 troops by mid-year.
After talks at a base in the Kuwaiti desert with his military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, Bush said security gains in Iraq “are allowing some US forces to return home.” He added: “Any additional reduction will be based on the recommendation of General Petraeus, and those recommendations will be based entirely on the conditions on the ground in Iraq.”
But Bush gave a sense of the long-term US commitment when he said in a television interview on Friday the United States would have a presence in Iraq that could “easily” last a decade. Zebari said the future role of US troops and their eventual pullout would be covered in the pact. In contrast, the declaration of principles did not clarify how long US forces would remain in the country or what mission they would pursue.
“Iraq is in need of this US presence but the period will be defined in the pact ... This timeframe will be set by the Iraqi government’s authorization,” he added. “The pact will cover the tasks of US troops in Iraq and their mission in the next phase. There was a lot that was raised in previous years about withdrawal of troops ... this accord can regulate this,” Zebari said.
