Jordan’s King Says He Wrote Netanyahu of Hamas Offer

In a disclosure certain to further embarrass the Israeli government over a spy case gone awry, King Hussein of Jordan said Wednesday that he told Israel two days before it sent hit men to kill a Hamas leader that the militant Islamic movement was ready to consider a dialogue with Israel.

The king’s statement, which revealed new details about the botched operation, seemed intended to keep up the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from any repetition of a case that has sparked outrage in Israel and abroad. A spokesman for the prime minister said the king’s letter had arrived too late.

The failed assassination Sept. 25 led to the capture of two Israeli intelligence agents and their subsequent exchange for Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who spent eight years in an Israeli prison but returned to the Gaza Strip in triumph this week.

The king’s comments, in a lengthy speech in the Jordanian capital, Amman, appeared to reflect his continuing anger over Israel’s decision to launch the assassination attempt on Jordanian soil. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has remained its staunchest Arab ally.

Hussein said that in addition to notifying Israel of the potential for a dialogue with Hamas--a group that has killed scores of Israelis in suicide operations--he had offered himself as an intermediary.

“Forty-eight hours before this painful incident, I sent a letter to the prime minister of Israel to tell him that there was a possibility for a dialogue between them and Hamas,” he told an audience of ministers and other prominent Jordanians. “It’s been said that this letter did not arrive on time.”

David Bar-Illan, a senior advisor to Netanyahu, said the letter, reportedly sent through the Amman office of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did not arrive until the day after the assassination attempt.

Hussein also said Netanyahu had made a secret visit to Jordan with two top ministers to apologize for the attempt to kill Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal. But the king, who described the attack as an insult to all Jordanians, said he had ordered his younger brother to meet with them instead of doing so himself.

The spy scandal continued to reverberate here Wednesday, stealing attention even from a U.S.-mediated, predawn meeting that brought Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat together for the first time in eight months.

Officials for all sides said the talks between the leaders may help defuse tensions that have brought Middle East peacemaking perilously close to collapse. But they said it was too early to tell whether the meeting signaled an end to the crisis brought on by Israeli settlement construction and Islamic suicide bombings.

“Words are nice; actions are better,” a U.S. official said. “We need to see real results.”

In Washington, President Clinton welcomed news that the leaders had met. “The fact that they met is encouraging. The most important thing is that it occurred, and it occurred not a moment too soon,” he said.

The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was arranged by U.S. mediator Dennis B. Ross. With Ross’ prodding, nine joint Israeli-Palestinian committees had already resumed discussions this week on various issues, including plans for a Palestinian airport in Gaza.

Negotiations on more comprehensive issues, including Netanyahu’s proposal for accelerated talks aimed at a permanent peace settlement, are scheduled in Washington at the end of the month. Ross was expected to leave for Washington early today but will return to the region next week, U.S. officials said.

Ironically, the peace effort, deadlocked for months, appears to have received a sudden shove forward from Israel’s attempt on the life of one Hamas leader and its release of another. Netanyahu and Arafat, who had refused to meet since March, found themselves propelled toward each other this week by the strengthening of a common enemy, Hamas.

Israel’s attack on Meshaal and its sudden granting of freedom to Yassin have increased Hamas’ political power and created headaches for Arafat and Netanyahu alike, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

Yassin is Arafat’s biggest potential rival, and Arafat needed the meeting with Netanyahu to show that he is in charge. Netanyahu, in turn, needed “to get a positive story out there to get the other one off the front page,” said an official close to the talks.

But talk shows and newscasts all day Wednesday, while mentioning the summit prominently, remained largely focused on fallout from the misadventure in Jordan. Commentators speculated on the future of Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, director of the secretive Mossad, and on the credibility of a panel appointed by the government to investigate the incident.