War Jitters Mount in Jordan and Iraq a Week Ahead of Deadline

With both sides dug into hard positions for today’s U.S.-Iraqi talks in Geneva, war jitters mounted Tuesday in the Middle East.

Rumors that air traffic would be shut down have swept Baghdad and Amman in the past 48 hours, despite official denials.

In the Iraqi capital, Western embassies were reported stocking food and water. An Associated Press dispatch said the Iraqi Health Ministry has ordered hospitals to handle only critical cases and that doctors have been told to be prepared “from now on” to deal with war casualties.

In Jordan, the flow of refugees from Iraq has begun rising again, and authorities here fear that war would spill another 2 million people across the border, most of them Asian workers, more than doubling the number that fled Kuwait and Iraq in the first months of the Persian Gulf crisis.

The ranking American diplomat in Baghdad, Charge d’Affaires Joseph C. Wilson IV, told reporters on Monday that the situation at the U.S. Embassy was fluid. “We are reviewing our status on a day-to-day basis with the State Department,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. The dispatch also quoted unidentified witnesses as saying embassy personnel have begun destroying files.

The report quoted Iraqi aviation sources as saying Iraqi airspace could be closed to all but military traffic beginning Thursday if the Geneva talks between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz fail to break the deadlock. Next Tuesday is the U.N. Security Council-imposed deadline for President Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait or face attack by American-led land, sea and air forces.

Fears that Baghdad might shut down the daily Iraqi Airways flight to Amman, its only remaining international air link, were heightened by two changes in the departure time in the past 10 days.

Aviation officials here have denied war-jitter rumors that Jordan’s airports would be shut down beginning Thursday. A Jordan Times report on Tuesday said that all flights from Amman to Europe and the United States are fully booked through Tuesday’s U.N. deadline.

The United States, Britain and several other European countries have issued advisories against traveling in Jordan in the past two weeks, and over the past month a number of foreign airlines have discontinued service to Amman and other capitals in the region.

If the the Baghdad-Amman Iraqi Airways flights were canceled, foreigners in Iraq would face a risky option of leaving by road if they chose to flee. Roads from the capital reach the borders of Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, but most require a half-day’s drive. Furthermore, Iraqi regulations require a week’s notice for non-Arabs to travel more than 25 miles from the capital, and motorists are stopped at military and police checkpoints.