Hussein Assails Delay on Arms : He Charges ‘Reneging,’ Says Ties Will Suffer

King Hussein of Jordan warned the Reagan Administration on Thursday that relations between Amman and Washington will suffer because of the delay in approving a $1.9-billion arms sale for Jordan.

Hussein said that postponing the sale would constitute “reneging” on Jordan’s agreement with Washington and that it would be the last time the Jordanians attempt to secure the weapons package of jet fighters and surface-to-air missiles from the United States.

He spoke to Western reporters here only moments before the U.S. Senate voted, 97 to 1, to delay the sale until next March 1 unless Jordan begins peace talks with Israel.

The 49-year-old monarch said that the United States, by adopting such a position, “will have damaged its own credibility in terms of the role it could play for its own interests and for the interests of all in the area.”

He implied that the collapse of the arms deal would cause the Jordanians to lose their faith in America’s commitments in the Mideast peace process.

The king’s low-key but clearly angry comments were prompted by press reports from Washington that President Reagan, faced with overwhelming congressional opposition to the arms sale, has agreed to postpone consideration of the deal until next March.

Hussein, meeting with a group of Western reporters before conferring with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, said it was unacceptable for the Reagan Administration to link the arms sale to the progress of peace talks between Jordan and Israel.

“One wouldn’t like to use the word blackmail, “ he said, “but if it were, it is totally unaccepted. And I think it’s not a way of dealing with problems among friends.”

On other matters, Hussein applauded the “positive signs” in the speech that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres delivered Monday at the United Nations. He praised Peres’ willingness to call an international conference as a first step toward Middle East peace--a move the Israelis had long resisted--but the king said the speech also contained a number of important “contradictions.”

Hussein’s own plan offers peace to Israel in exchange for Arab territories it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War and calls for an international forum to oversee a settlement.

Peres’ latest offer provides a far more limited role for international participants and would eventually require direct negotiations between Jordan and Israel. The Israeli prime minister also declared a unilateral end to the state of war between Israel and Jordan and called on Hussein to reciprocate.

At his press conference Thursday, Hussein rebuffed Peres’ request for an end to the state of war between their countries. “It’s easy for him to say he is willing to end the state of war when he’s in possession of the West Bank,” Hussein complained. The West Bank of the Jordan River is one of the Arab territories the Israelis have occupied since 1967.

Hussein also discussed his growing irritation with Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He said he was “not very happy with the situation.” The Egyptians, too, have indicated a growing frustration with the PLO.

In perhaps his most ominous comments to date about the tension between himself and Arafat, Hussein said the PLO leader will visit Amman next week and that he plans to have a “very serious discussion with the leadership of the PLO to ascertain where we go from here, and I hope the results are positive.”

He said Jordan is still committed to the idea of negotiating with the PLO for a Mideast peace agreement, but when pressed about whether he would consider replacing Arafat as a negotiating partner his reply seemed intentionally vague.

Western diplomats believe that the Jordanians are furious with Arafat over a series of recent incidents, notably the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and the last-minute breakdown of talks in London between a joint Jordanian-PLO delegation and the British government.

One diplomat said he believes the king will present Arafat with “a bill of particulars” to which he must agree or bow out of the negotiating process. A high priority item, the diplomat said, will probably be demands for Arafat to renounce terrorism.

Diplomats believe that Arafat’s position may have been considerably weakened by recent Palestinian terrorism. But veteran observers of the PLO also noted that Arafat in the past has proved to be an elusive negotiating partner, nimbly avoiding difficult decisions.

Analysts also believe that the peace process could be derailed by the failure of the Reagan Administration to live up to its commitments on the arms sale, even though Hussein has privately acknowledged that he understands the need to demonstrate progress in the peace talks.

The king was clearly being careful to avoid a repetition of the events of 1984, when Hussein criticized the Reagan Administration’s failure to live up to its promise to deliver more than 1,600 Stinger ground-to-air missiles.

In the current negotiations, Hussein is seeking an arms package valued at $1.9 billion, including 40 jet fighters, either F-16 warplanes or the less advanced F-20s, and mobile Hawk surface-to-air missiles.

Under a compromise proposed by Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and approved Thursday by the Senate, the sale cannot take place until March 1, 1986, unless “direct and meaningful” negotiations between Israel and Jordan are undertaken.