Crisis Shakes the ‘Plucky Little King’ : Jordan: A longtime survivor, the monarch finds himself caught in U.S.-Iraq confrontation.

When Jordan’s King Hussein went before the foreign press to confront the rapidly deepening crisis in the Middle East last week, diplomats who have known him for years were taken aback.

The 54-year-old descendant of the prophet Mohammed and leader of the first family of Islam looked ashen. His voice, ordinarily a sonorous, broadcast-quality baritone, was uncertain, and at moments he seemed close to tears. The “plucky little king,” as Western journalists call him with either affection or derision, was and is in hot water again.

Having survived chilling assassination attempts, hair-trigger confrontations with Israel and intimidation by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the fixture of Arab moderation finds his country the last loophole in the international embargo thrown around Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

King Hussein is economically dependent upon Iraq since he has no oil of his own, yet he now faces a threat by the United States to shut down his port of Aqaba unless he joins in the sanctions. Unlike past political crises during his 37 years on the throne, the current situation presents him with a predicament in which he has little opportunity to exert influence.

No wonder longtime acquaintances find him looking suddenly older.

Succeeding his father on the throne when he was only 18, Hussein has survived a host of world leaders who have struggled with the politics and passions of the Middle East.

When he was 16, he saw his grandfather, King Abdullah, shot by an assassin. When he tried to capture the deranged gunman, he too was shot, but he survived because the bullet was deflected by a medal on his uniform.

By the time he replaced his father, King Tahlal, who had become mentally ill, Hussein had already been the target of an assassination attempt by an anti-Israeli fanatic.

Besides escaping coup attempts and several more assassination plots, including poisoned food and nose drops, he emerged victorious from a bloody civil war against the Palestinian Liberation Organization. And he recovered from the defeat and territorial losses of 1967’s disastrous Six-Day War, in which he joined the Egyptian attack on Israel.

Unlike his radical brethren, he has made an accommodation with Israel’s existence and cultivated his relationship with Britain and the United States.

Once regarded as a notorious playboy, he has been married four times, widowed once and divorced twice. Queen Noor, his wife of the last 12 years, is the former Lisa Halaby, daughter of Najeeb Halaby, a former chairman of Pan American Airways and former head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Compared to oil-rich Middle Eastern leaders deluged with petrodollars over recent years, the king lives in comparative austerity, perhaps because he was brought up under modest circumstances--at least for royalty--when the Jordanian capital was hardly more than a dusty village.

His favorite residence is a modest palace in downtown Amman, bereft of the amenities gathered by lesser monarchs. Aides work in offices with fading paint and well-worn furniture.

At home, he is said to prefer to lounge in Western jeans, and on official business he is more often in Western business suits than his Bedouin robe and headdress.

Besides flying his own jet on his travels about the world, he is fond of auto racing, tennis and water skiing. But westernized as he is, he clings to custom in some odd ways. Visitors are carefully instructed, for example, that in his presence they must not cross their legs in a fashion that will expose the soles of their feet.

Understood to be bearing a personal message from Saddam Hussein, the king arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington in the wee hours Wednesday morning. Today he will call on President Bush at the latter’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Me.

Bush is the eighth American President with whom Hussein has done business as King. The two have known each other for years, because in the early 1970s when Bush was director of Central Intelligence, Hussein was on the CIA payroll. The CIA’s payments to Hussein were made public early in the Jimmy Carter Administration, and were then ordered stopped by President Carter.

A Washington spokesman for the Arab League said Wednesday that the king represents the last, best hope “to avert a collision” in the Middle East.

Under the circumstances, Administration sources speculated Wednesday, his urgent trip to see Bush probably reflects a recognition that his own position with the United States is in need of reinforcement.

So far he has refused to endorse Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait but he has also declined to shut down the one remaining supply route into Baghdad. And he has roundly denounced the U.S. troop buildup in Saudi Arabia.

For the first time in a Middle East crisis, he apparently has no card to play but his good standing in both camps.

He is, State Department sources said, in no position to pressure the United States and its allies in the embargo, nor does he have the ability to help Iraq militarily.