Albawaba.com
Amman
The United States said that Jordan had informed the U.S. administration of Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb’s landmark visit to Baghdad Wednesday, beforehand and that the US advised Amman against the move.
“The Jordanians did tell us about this visit in advance, and we gave them our opinion, which is that high-level visits to Iraq are not advisable, …and inappropriate, given Iraq's past behavior,” said Richard Boucher, State Department spokesman at the daily press briefing Thursday, of which Albawaba.com received an e-mail copy.
Boucher added that the US has had no objection to the oil agreement between Jordan and Iraq, by which the former receives half of its oil needs for free, while the other half is offered at preferential prices.
“The barter arrangement with cut-price oil between Jordan and Iraq has been going on for some time. It's been reported and noted by the UN Security Council, and we have not objected to that arrangement.”
Abu Ragheb’s visit is the first at such a high level since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Jordan was also the first Arab country to send a plane to Baghdad, in defiance of the UN sanctions on the country. It was then followed by other planes from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, among other Arab and world countries.
”There is -- there have always been some ties between Arab countries and Iraq. There are varying levels of sympathy. I think some of the people that Iraq has invaded, attacked, and bombed are not as sympathetic as others. But I think what is important is that international support for the sanctions, we believe, remains effective. We do have different situations that arise with regard to airplanes. We have gone through that extensively,” said the official.
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