Jordan Cracks Down on Militant Hamas : Mideast: Action against ‘illegal political activity’ comes as peace process speeds up.

Security forces raided offices belonging to the militant Islamic movement Hamas on Monday and arrested up to a dozen members of the organization in a sweeping crackdown, Jordanian officials said.

Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah Khatib said the offices, which were registered as businesses, were searched and then shut down after authorities determined that they were serving as “fronts for illegal political activity.”

Khatib said warrants were issued Monday for four top political leaders of the movement. Hamas identified two of them as Khaled Meshaal, the target of a bungled 1997 assassination attempt by Israel, and Mousa abu Marzuk, who was deported from the United States the same year and given refuge here by the late King Hussein. The others sought by authorities were Ibrahim Ghosheh, a Hamas spokesman, and another representative, Mohammed Nazzal.

All four were said to be in Iran on Monday.

The crackdown on Hamas, a Palestinian group that is violently opposed to the Middle East peace process, comes just as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright prepares to visit the Middle East for talks aimed at pushing the peace negotiations forward. And it comes as Israel and the Palestinians struggle to wrap up a long-delayed agreement on how and when to implement last year’s Wye Plantation accord.

Israel has long urged both the Palestinians and Jordan to rein in Hamas, which is believed responsible for bombings and other attacks that have left scores of Israelis dead in recent years.

The Palestinians periodically have acted against Hamas, rounding up militants and closing branch offices, but never to Israel’s satisfaction. The Jordanians too have largely tolerated the organization as long as its leaders did not criticize or threaten Israel too vocally from Jordan.

It was unclear Monday whether there was a specific trigger for the sudden crackdown, or whether it was linked to the likelihood of movement soon in the deadlocked peace process. Despite their intensive negotiations, Israel and the Palestinians have yet to solve remaining differences over the U.S.-brokered Wye accord.

Speaking by telephone, Khatib, the Jordanian foreign minister, said he was not familiar with all the details of the decision to shut the Hamas offices and arrest about a dozen Hamas members. Police also closed the office of Muslim Palestine, a magazine linked to Hamas.

But Khatib said the move was “consistent with Jordan’s policy of not allowing illegal activities to undermine the peace process or the leadership role of the Palestinian Authority,” the self-rule government of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

A Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip described the arrests and closures as “unfortunate.”

The spokesman, Mahmoud Zahar, said he believed that there may have been a misunderstanding between Jordan and Hamas that led to the government actions. In that case, he said, the problem would be quickly solved.

If not, he said, “perhaps the Jordanian administration has come under pressure from Israel and the United States.”

Zahar said Hamas had followed what he described as its own rules in not violating Jordanian laws or acting against the wishes of its Jordanian hosts.

“We hope this situation will be solved immediately and we will return to a normal situation,” he said.

* Fayed abu Shammalah contributed to this report from the Gaza Strip.

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In some 1997 stories, and stories from 2001 onward, Mousa abu Marzuk is referred to as Mousa abu Marzook.

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