AMMAN, 28 August 2006 — Jordan’s lower house of Parliament yesterday approved with majority of votes a controversial “terrorism prevention” draft law despite warnings by Arab and Jordanian human rights bodies that the bill posed threats to personal and public freedoms.

The vote by the House of Representatives came at the end of two days of deliberations on the draft law that was adopted by the government of Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit as a legislation of urgent importance.

The government contended that the law would enable the country’s security organs to uncover acts of terrorism before they took place, while its opponents, mainly the 17 lawmakers of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), viewed it as an encroachment on public freedoms that run counter to constitutional articles.

IAF deputy Nidal Abbadi alleged the draft echoed similar legislations that were enacted by the United States and other Western countries as part of the US-led war on terrorism.

The draft law entitles the State Security Court (SSC) public prosecutor to detain suspects, impose surveillance on their residences, monitor their contacts and prevent them from traveling, parliamentary sources said.

The bill now goes to the Senate for approval before receiving the king’s consent prior to becoming law.

The idea of the terrorism prevention law surfaced after November’s suicide bombings at three Amman hotels that killed 60 people and injured more than 90.

The blasts were claimed by the Jordan-born fugitive Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq on June 7.

Jordan to Get 30,000 bpd of Iraqi Crude at Reduced Prices: Premier

Meanwhile, Bakhit revealed yesterday that the Iraqi government had agreed to supply Jordan with 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude at “preferential prices”. He told the lower house of Parliament that the most important results of his visit to Iraq earlier this month was “a memorandum of understanding for supplying Jordan with 30,000 bpd of Iraqi crude oil at preferential prices and an agreement to build an oil pipeline between Iraq and the port of Aqaba” on the Red Sea.

“We have also agreed to increase Jordan’s imports of Iraqi crude gradually from 30,000 to 60,000 bpd,” he said. Bakhit said that “Jordan cannot import all of its energy requirements, amounting to 100,000 bpd, from Iraq at the start because we have to mix Iraqi crude with other oils” during the downstream operations conducted at Jordan’s sole refinery at Zarqa, 30 kilometers east of Amman.

He did not give further details about the pipeline, but he referred to an agreement concluded with the former regime of President Saddam Hussein to construct such a facility between the two countries.