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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (67177)	1/20/2003 1:55:59 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Jordan PM fears economic fallout of attack on Iraq By Michel Cousins, Arab News Staff www.arabnews.com JEDDAH, 20 January 2003 — Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb fears that his country will become a major economic victim if there is an Iraqi war. An attack on Iraq could be a catastrophe for the Jordanian economy, he told delegates to the Jeddah Economic Forum. Jordan would be uniquely affected because of the level of its trade with its neighbor. But although Jordan would suffer, he was confident that his country’s economy would not collapse, he said. Abu Ragheb was speaking on the second day of the JEF. Jordan, he said, hoped that there would be no conflict. “The possibility of war is still avoidable,” he said. He was also confident that the arms inspectors could “achieve their purposes”. Nonetheless, his government was making contingencies for every possible scenario. If war breaks out, he told the meeting, Jordan would be looking for economic support from its friends. “We hope we can rely on them.” There was no specific request for help from Saudi Arabia or anyone else but given the context and location of his appeal, it was seen by many at the Forum as an indirect request to the Saudi government to step in and at least provide oil supplies should the need arise. Jordan’s increasingly successful, export-driven economy is highly dependent on trade with Iraq. It imports 100,000 barrels a day of Iraqi oil — 100 percent of its oil requirements — under a UN-approved, bilateral oil-for-food deal. Moreover, according to Abu Ragheb, 20 percent of Jordanian exports go to Iraq. In fact the export figure is thought to be even higher: a considerable quantity of Jordanian goods heading for Iraq is reputedly shipped via Turkey and then across the border into the autonomous Kurdish zone where import duty is only five percent compared to the 10 percent charged by the Iraqis on the Jordanian border.