AMMAN, 3 February 2005 — Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Jordan’s King Abdallah yesterday, officials said, a sign the two countries want to put mutual recriminations about US policy in Iraq and a border dispute behind them.
“Syria has come out with a positive stance over Iraq and this is encouraging,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Hani Mulki told reporters after the talks in the royal palace.
Assad’s one-day visit was aimed at improving ties between the two neighbors of Iraq, long at odds over the aims of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Middle East peace process.
Jordan, a key US ally who covertly supported the invasion, has in recent months joined Washington in piling pressure on Damascus to be more supportive of the postwar political process in Iraq, officials said.
“We told the Syrians repeatedly the regional situation has dramatically changed and they could no longer put conditions but must comply,” one official said on condition of anonymity.
Amman is Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s firmest Arab ally and hosts the largest training scheme outside Iraq to rebuild its neighbor’s fledgling security forces.
Syria opposed the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and Washington has accused it of failing to stop infiltrations and weapons smuggling into Iraq, which Syria denies.
Relations between Jordan and Syria also took a turn for the worse when Amman publicly raised a long-buried border dispute last year.
Jordanian officials said Damascus should reverse several decades of creeping encroachments on Jordanian land.
Syria has in recent months agreed to move back fences and sand posts it gradually shifted beyond the internationally recognized border, they said.
“After several meetings with the Syrians we have witnessed a positive readiness to end this issue,” said one Interior Ministry official.
Jordan has boosted security along the Syrian border amid concerns Syrian militants were abetting Jordanian radicals in alleged plots, revealed last year, to attack Jordanian and US targets in the kingdom.
