Jordan's prime minister expressed astonishment Wednesday at US President George Bush statement that he intends to move his country's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
At the same time, the deputy speaker of Jordan's parliament urged Arabs and other Muslims to strike at US interests if Washington went ahead with plans to move the embassy.
Bush told reporters Tuesday that he expected to keep a campaign pledge to move the embassy to Jerusalem, whose status is one of the main bones of contention between Israelis and Palestinians.
However, after a working luncheon in Washington with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Bush stressed that the city's status "will be ultimately determined by the interested parties.”
US Secretary of State Colin Powell infuriated the Arab world on March 8 when he told a congressional committee Bush was committed to moving Washington's "embassy to the capital of Israel, which is Jerusalem," though he later retracted his comment.
Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb, speaking to parliament's lower house, said Jordan was "astonished by Bush's proposal and the attitude of the American administration."
He characterized as "contradictory" Bush's comments on moving the embassy and on the future status of Jerusalem.
Abu Ragheb reiterated that Jordan's policy on Jerusalem is that the eastern part of the city, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, is Arab territory and that its future must be determined in accordance with UN resolutions to that effect.
Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem as its "undivided and eternal capital" is not internationally recognised, while the Palestinians want to make the eastern sector the capital of their future independent state.
The United States has not said it would move the embassy to east Jerusalem.
For his part, deputy parliamentary speaker Khalil Attiyeh called on the "Arab and Muslim people to wake up from their deep sleep and to rebel from the Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea against America and to freeze and strike at US interests wherever they may be."
Anti-US action should be carried out "if the United States keeps its pledge to the criminal Sharon and transfers its embassy to Jerusalem," Attiyeh told MPs.
Attiyeh said Arabs and Muslims should "boycott US goods."
"The Arab summit (meeting in Amman March 27-28) should prove to Bush and Sharon that the Arabs ... are not fools", he said, adding that Bush's and Powell's statements "should not be left without a reaction." -- AMMAN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
