Israel Admits Patrol Boat Fired Near Hussein’s Yacht : Middle East: Defense Ministry spokesman says incident was a ‘routine weapons check.’ Jordan’s monarch is ‘assured it won’t happen again.’

A recent weekend pleasure cruise by Jordan’s King Hussein was abruptly interrupted when an Israeli naval patrol boat fired shots nearby, Israeli officials said Friday.

The king thought they were shooting at him and ordered his boat to flee into the coastal waters of Saudi Arabia. The Israelis say they were only clearing their guns.

The incident took place last Saturday in the Gulf of Aqaba at the head of the Red Sea and was revealed six days later in the newspaper Haaretz. No one was hurt, although the shooting may fuel already mounting ill will between Israel and neighboring Jordan.

According to Haaretz, Hussein said that the Israelis pursued his vessel and fired repeatedly at him. The royal yacht was accompanied by a Jordanian patrol boat, but it did not fire back.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry here said that no boat pursued Hussein.

“No shots were fired by the Israeli navy at King Hussein’s yacht, and no chase was conducted,” the spokesman said. He termed the firing a “routine weapons check.”

He added that “Israel naval units have longstanding and clear orders regarding rules of conduct during the passage of King Hussein’s yacht, and in the incident noted, the Israel naval vessel acted in accordance with these instructions.

“We assured Jordan it won’t happen again,” the spokesman concluded.

Immediately after the incident, Jordanian officials asked the United States, which is friendly to both governments, to intervene with Israel. William Brown, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, met with ranking Israeli officials Tuesday to express King Hussein’s “outrage” and the Bush Administration’s “concern” about the potential implications, sources said.

During the meeting, the sources said, the Israelis promised to issue strict instructions to Israeli sea patrols to ensure that no further incidents take place. U.S. envoys then relayed the assurances back to the palace in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

On the basis of the meetings, a State Department spokesman said Friday that the United States “felt comfortable” with Israeli assertions that the incident was “inadvertent.”

Sources for Haaretz, a liberal daily, asserted that the firing was no accident.

“Nobody could have had any doubt that the king was on the boat,” the paper quoted a source as saying. “He was standing on the deck, and it was possible to identify him easily.”

Privately, a U.S. official in Washington said the Israeli explanation was “highly unusual.” Administration sources believe, however, that the Israeli government “did not purposely open up on the king of Jordan.”

U.S. officials said that the Israeli response has not fully satisfied Hussein.

In recent months, tensions have been mounting between Israel and Jordan over repeated attempts by renegade Jordanian soldiers to cross into Israel and attack border settlements. There have also been incidents of rockets fired into Israel from Jordanian territory by Palestinians who infiltrated from Syria.

Rightist Israeli politicians have asserted that Hussein’s rule over Jordan is illegitimate and that Palestinians who make up the bulk of the population there should wrest control of Jordan from him. These rightist Israelis assert that this would get rid of the Palestinian demand for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupies.

Hussein, alarmed by such talk, has stepped up contact with Iraq, which has the Middle East’s most powerful army and has voiced threats to use chemical weapons on Israel.

Times staff writer Robin Wright, in Washington, contributed to this story.