AMMAN, 27 August 2004 — Senior Iraqi and Jordanian officials met here yesterday in a new round of talks aimed at shoring up “security cooperation” between the two countries, according to an official statement. The discussions involved Jordan’s Public Security Chief Gen. Tahsin Shurdum and an Iraqi delegation led by the Interior Ministry Undersecretary for Administrative Affairs Adnan Al-Assadi, the Petra official news agency said.
“The two sides discussed various aspects of cooperation and coordination in security spheres,” it added. Petra did not give further details but what at stake are primarily preventing infiltration of militants across the common border to launch attacks against US-led multinational forces and providing protection for Jordanian drivers and businessmen operating in Iraq, informed sources said.
The discussions took place against the backdrop of a series of abductions by Iraqi armed groups that involved more than 12 Jordanian drivers and businessmen over the past five weeks.
Most of the Jordanian captives have been released, but sometimes after payment of ransoms. The Iraqi government informed Jordan earlier this month that it was arranging for armed squads to accompany Iraq-bound convoys of trucks, but Jordanian officials said the Iraqi side failed so far to fulfill this promise.
Militant Iraqi groups have said they were targeting Jordanian nationals working in Iraq to force them stop extending services to the US troops there. The Jordanian-Iraqi security talks also focus on the activity of Iraq-based, Al-Qaeda-linked groups which are believed to be led by the Jordanian fugitive Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a suspected aide of Osama Bin Laden, informed sources said.
The abductors of a Jordanian national are demanding a $10,000 ransom for his release, Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspaper reported yesterday, citing his relatives. Taleb Kanani told the daily that armed men kidnapped his son Nidal 13 days ago near the restive Iraqi town of Ramadi west of Baghdad along with a friend who was released earlier this week.
“My son’s abduction was for financial rather than political reasons. He was not taken by resistance fighters,” Taleb Kanani said.
Alaaeddin Al-Tawalbeh, who was abducted along with Kanani, meanwhile, told the daily he was released in order to return to Jordan and inform Kanani’s family that they have to pay a ransom.
“The abductors are not politicized and have no ties with the resistance. Their only demand is $10,000 in exchange of which they will release Kanani,” he said.
The 28-year-old Kanani is a bachelor who worked in a hotel in southern Jordan before going to Iraq “to collect debts”, his father said. On Tuesday, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said Kanani’s relatives informed it of his abduction in Iraq.
The announcement came as reports surfaced on an Islamic website of the kidnapping of a Jordanian and a Kenyan in Iraq.
