Jordan Closes Its Borders With Iraq : Gulf crisis: The kingdom says it can’t afford to assist any more refugees in event of war.

The government of Jordan closed the country’s border with Iraq today, saying refugees from Iraq and Kuwait won’t be allowed to cross in the event of war because it can’t afford to assist them without more foreign aid.

In another Persian Gulf-related development today, Prime Minister Mudar Badran said Jordanian forces were on full alert and disclosed that Syria had pledged to help defend the kingdom against any possible Israeli attack.

Syria and Egypt are two major Arab states participating in the U.S.-led multinational force arrayed in the gulf for possible military action to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

“In case of war, God forbid, any (Israeli) intervention against Jordan by air or by land will meet military resistance, and we will use all the means and power at our disposal,” Badran told a session of the Jordanian Parliament.

Badran’s statement followed news reports that Israel might thrust through Jordan to attack Iraq if war broke out in the Persian Gulf. Iraq has said in the event of war, Israel would be a prime target.

In a brief news dispatch about the border closing carried by the state-run Petra news agency, Interior Ministry Undersecretary Salameh Hammad was quoted as saying the decision was effective immediately.

He said the border would reopen after “a repatriation program is put forward by international organizations and world governments to airlift all evacuees home.” Jordan assumes that the first people to leave Iraq and Kuwait in wartime would be foreigners living there.

An airport source said that the closure also affected the only daily flight from Baghdad--an Iraqi Airways plane to Amman. He said today’s flight was turned away after it entered Jordanian airspace.

“We got orders from the Interior Ministry and the Civil Aviation Department not to allow any commercial flights from Iraq into Jordan,” the airport official said.

Several weeks ago, Jordanian officials pleaded for urgent aid contributions to the cash-strapped kingdom.

Jordan, widely perceived as pro-Iraqi, was the only country that kept its borders with Iraq open after Baghdad’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait. It became a way station for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled both nations.