Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb on Wednesday dismissed as "nonsense" suggestions by Israel's Likud leader, Ariel Sharon, that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat could topple the Jordanian monarchy, said AFP.
"These statements are nonsense and are aimed at sowing discord between Jordanians and Palestinians," Abu Ragheb told AFP.
"Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, and their people, don't fall into such traps and such attempts will never see the day," Abu Ragheb said.
Sharon, the right-wing candidate for the post of Israeli prime minister, on Tuesday was quoted as telling the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that Arafat could topple Jordan's King Abdallah as he tries to establish a Palestinian state.
"There is a risk of Yasser Arafat toppling the Hashemite regime in Jordan and establishing a Palestinian state in that country," he said.
Such statements are aimed at "undermining the whole peace process by turning attention away from the key issues towards issues that are the fruit of the imagination," Abu Ragheb told the agency.
Haaretz newspaper quoted the hawkish leader as saying that Jordanian officials had warned him of the "terrible danger" of a future Palestinian state stretching from the Iraqi border to the outskirts of Tel Aviv, should Israel agree to cede the Jordan Rift to Palestinian control.
Abu Ragheb firmly denied that Jordan made such statements, said AFP.
"Jordan is impatiently waiting for the day when it will have common borders with the Palestinian territories that would be controlled on the Palestinian side by the Palestinians themselves," he said.
But Sharon, according to the paper, confirmed that unnamed Jordanian officials spoke of "the terrible danger, in the end, of a Palestinian state that will begin at the Iraqi border, and will end at the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Palestinian information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, meanwhile, said Sharon was "rabid," "dangerous", and should be opposed by all Arabs, said AFP.
Responding to Sharon's statements, Abed Rabbo said: "These are the words of a rabid man."
When he (Sharon) says something like this he assumes again his hostile intentions to re-open a wider conflict," Abed Rabbo was quoted as telling Voice of Palestine radio -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
