Jordan and Israel Close to Accord, Monarch Says

King Hussein of Jordan said Monday that his kingdom and Israel are closing in on a peace agreement to end 26 years of hostility but that he will not sign the pact until Israel and the Palestinians complete far more complex negotiations.

“The final peace can come only when all of the elements are put together,” the monarch said, confirming that Jordan will not get ahead of the Arab consensus in the 19-month-old, U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace process.

Talking to a small group of reporters, Hussein also:

* Said that U.S.-Jordan relations, strained during the Persian Gulf War, have been restored to their usual warmth.

* Denied that Jordan helped Iraq during the Gulf War, heatedly rejecting a congressional report issued last week that said the kingdom provided intelligence and other assistance to Baghdad.

* Called for “democracy, pluralism, respect for human rights and national reconciliation” in Iraq, conditions he conceded can be achieved only by a change in leadership.

* Said he will offer encouragement to individual opponents of Saddam Hussein’s regime but rejected close ties with the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group supported by the Clinton Administration, Saudi Arabia and some other elements of the Gulf War coalition.

* Said his health is good after what he described as the “total removal” last November of a cancer in his kidney and ureter.

* Refused to take sides in Jordan’s upcoming election, the second since he restored an elected Parliament in 1989, although he conceded that the political structure is not yet “what it should be” because too many parties are active.

Hussein said that Jordanian and Israeli negotiators are on the verge of agreeing to a detailed agenda that both sides expect will lead to a peace agreement ending a technical state of war that has been in effect since 1967. But he said that the agreement will not be ratified until there is “some progress we hope and pray will come on the Israel-Palestinian track.”

His comments seemed to dash hopes that Jordan was about to become the second Arab country, following Egypt in 1979, to sign a separate peace treaty with Israel. As a negotiating strategy, Israel prefers to deal separately with each of its Arab adversaries, while the Arabs insist that they are interested only in a comprehensive peace covering all parties to the long-festering dispute.

“It is about time that people saw some tangible results” from the peace talks that began in Madrid in October, 1991, Hussein said.

“This opportunity cannot be lost. If we lose it, the future will be extremely bleak,” he said.

Hussein rejected the General Accounting Office’s findings that Jordan provided Iraq with allied and Israeli intelligence, sold Baghdad military spare parts and cooperated in other ways with Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“We were never supporters of the invasion of any country by any country in our region,” Hussein said. “Any notion or idea that we were part of or a party to or were knowledgeable of the event before it happened is entirely wrong.”

He was sharply critical of the Iraqi leadership but said that he will not follow the example of the Clinton Administration or Saudi King Fahd by meeting publicly with the leadership of the Iraqi National Congress, a self-styled democratic opposition group.

Hussein said he is willing to talk to opposition forces within Iraq but is reluctant to deal with the Iraqi National Congress because many of its leaders are exiles. He also suggested that some members of the organization have been involved in legal problems in Jordan.

He said it is “really ridiculous” to suggest a high-profile endorsement of the organization, although he said he is prepared to cooperate with some members of the group.

Turning to Jordan’s parliamentary election, scheduled for later this year, Hussein said he will not endorse any candidate or party despite suggestions that royal support for moderate candidates may be the only way to prevent a victory by Islamic extremists. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood scored impressive victories in the 1989 election, the first one since Parliament was suspended during the 1967 Middle East War.