Visit to Damascus Moves Jordan, Syria Closer

The Jordanian and Syrian governments moved another step closer to settling their longstanding differences Tuesday when Jordanian Prime Minister Zaid Rifai began an official visit to Damascus with a call for a “new phase in Arab relations.”

The changed tenor in relations between the two countries, which had massed troops on their respective borders as recently as four years ago, became immediately apparent when Rifai invited Syrian President Hafez Assad to visit Jordan, which Rifai described as the Syrian leader’s “second homeland.”

Rifai met with Assad on Tuesday afternoon for a discussion of what Syrian television described, without elaboration, as bilateral relations and Middle East affairs.

The Jordanian’s trip to Damascus is expected to be followed relatively soon by a summit meeting between Assad and Jordan’s King Hussein to give their official blessing to the rapprochement between the two countries, which has been carried out with Saudi Arabian mediation.

Extraordinary Admission

On Sunday, Hussein released the contents of a message to Rifai containing an extraordinary admission that elements of the anti-Syrian, fundamentalist Islamic organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood living in Jordan had helped stir up unrest in Syria in recent years.

Many diplomats here regarded the Hussein message--published as front-page news in Damascus--as a Syrian condition for normalizing relations.

Hussein, who had allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to operate relatively freely in Jordan, said in his message Tuesday that the brotherhood’s members are in reality “outlaws committing crimes and sowing seeds of dissension among people.”

Assad had held Jordan responsible for the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. In 1982, between 3,000 and 10,000 people were reported killed when the Syrian army crushed an uprising led by the brotherhood in the Syrian city of Hama.

‘This Rotten Group’

In his message, Hussein said he wanted to warn “against the evil designs of this rotten group and urge all citizens to prevent them from implementing their evil designs.”

Rifai responded to the king’s message Tuesday with a statement saying that “everyone should help to unify Arab ranks and pave the ground for a new phase in Arab relations that would lead to liberation and prosperity.”

While the talks between Jordan and Syria seem likely to significantly ease their common tensions, diplomats and officials in both countries are relatively dubious about how the Mideast peace process might benefit from such easing of tension.

For example, while Syria has virtually dropped its previous criticism of Jordan and Hussein, it still savagely attacks Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat for what it calls his abandonment of the armed struggle against Israel.

A Joint Initiative

Arafat is pursuing a joint peace initiative with Hussein, who is pressing Arafat to adopt even more conciliatory moves in an effort to get peace talks started.

Diplomats are convinced that Saudi Arabia offered Syria and Jordan considerable financial aid as an inducement to publicly compose their differences.

Now that reconciliation talks have begun, each country feels that it may be able to persuade the other to change its attitudes regarding a Mideast settlement.

In addition to their differences over the Muslim Brotherhood and relations with Arafat, Syria supports non-Arab Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, while Jordan is a close ally of Iraq.