U.S. Complains to Jordan on Heels of King’s Speech Tilting Toward Iraq

The United States officially complained to Jordan on Thursday about a seemingly pro-Iraqi speech delivered by King Hussein to his subjects, who have put increased pressure on the monarchy to abandon its neutrality in the Persian Gulf War and throw its support behind Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In a 45-minute meeting here with Foreign Minister Taher Masri, U.S. Ambassador Roger Harrison delivered what a State Department official described as “talking points” to “show we were not happy” with the king’s speech.

The objective of Harrison’s visit, the official said, was to set the record straight, challenging the Jordanian leadership on views the king had expressed that Washington considers factually wrong and complaining about the king’s conclusions.

At the same time, Secretary of State James A. Baker III told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, “We have a major disagreement with the king and what he said in that speech” delivered Wednesday.

“We hope to keep lines of communication open to the king,” Baker added, “notwithstanding he is on the wrong side.”

Later, Roman Popadiuk, deputy White House press secretary, said Washington is reviewing aid to Jordan in the wake of the king’s speech. Jordan receives $102 million annually from the United States.

The U.S. complaint was not officially made public in Amman, already a hotbed of anti-American sentiment, but Jordanian analysts with close ties to the monarchy said the king and Jordan’s elected leadership were equally displeased with Washington’s reaction.

In his address, King Hussein expressed the strongest possible support for the Iraqi people and described the allied assault on Iraq as “a war against all Arabs and Muslims, not only against Iraq.”

Outside Jordan, the speech was widely seen as a sharp and sudden tilt toward Baghdad by a neighboring nation that has long considered itself equally friendly with the United States and the West.

But the king’s advisers had taken pains to delete any personal reference to Saddam Hussein in the address--a clear signal, they said, that Jordan is not throwing its political or military support behind Baghdad. And the king reiterated Jordan’s officially neutral stance several times during the speech.

Senior Jordanian officials and prominent analysts said the king’s passionate Arabic rhetoric, which included such phrases as “this savage and large-scale war which was imposed on brotherly Iraq,” were meant as direct messages to his own people, a nation of nearly 4 million that includes hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have staged celebrations each time an Iraqi Scud missile has struck Israel.

As the death toll mounts in neighboring Iraq and allied bombs and missiles seek to destroy what once was the most powerful army in the Arab world, popular pressure on the king to take sides has escalated dramatically, they said.

Posters of Saddam Hussein have papered the windows and walls of most shops and homes in Amman’s neighborhoods since the war began, and thousands of Jordanians have expressed the desire to fight on the Iraqi side in the conflict.

“If the king hadn’t come out strongly and emotionally in favor of the Iraqis at a time like this, only God knows what might have happened here,” one Jordanian analyst said. “You have no idea in America just how narrow is the tightrope he is walking right now. And if something happens to King Hussein, I don’t think Washington would be very happy either.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Secretary Baker during his testimony Thursday on Capitol Hill.

Alternatives to the king’s rule, Baker said, are “not a pretty picture” in increasingly fundamentalist Jordan. When asked if U.S. foreign aid to Jordan would continue, Baker strongly implied that there would be no interruption in the aid pipeline despite the king’s speech.

Interviews with several Jordanians in the capital Thursday morning made it clear that King Hussein succeeded in the principal objective of his address.

“He said the things we are all thinking,” said Yahyia Afghani, an artist who helps make the thousands of Scud missile key rings, earrings and pocket lighters that his family sells in their small downtown souvenir shop.

“I was very glad that he spoke against Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Before he spoke yesterday, I wasn’t sure. But yesterday, he is very clearly against the American aggression.”

Fineman reported from Amman and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer James Gerstenzang, in Washington, contributed to the story.