AMMAN, 31 August 2003 — Jordan’s King Abdallah is to make a much-delayed visit to Iran on Tuesday expected to seal a long rift in diplomatic relations, officials said yesterday.
During the two-day visit Abdallah will hold talks with President Mohammad Khatami and other officials on the situation in the Middle East, especially war-torn Iraq, the officials said. They are also to focus on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and ways of bolstering bilateral relations.
The monarch will be accompanied by Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb. In preparation for the visit several Iranian officials have visited Jordan in the past few months, including presidential envoy Seyyed Mohammad Sadr who in April delivered a message to Abdallah from Khatami on Iraq and ways of guaranteeing peace and security for the volatile region.
Abdallah’s visit is expected to seal diplomatic ties between Iran and Jordan which were restored in 1991 after a 10-year break, during which Tehran criticized the late King Hussein over his ties with the late Iranian Shah and his support for Baghdad in the 1980-1988 Iran -Iraq war.
Relations improved after Abdallah took the throne in February 1999, and the monarch met with Khatami on the fringes of the millennium summit in New York in September 2000.
The monarch’s wife, Queen Rania Al-Abdallah, paid a visit to Iran in July 2000. But Abdallah indefinitely postponed the visit to Tehran which was to have taken place in February 2001 amid a diplomatic spat last year, when Jordan decided to recall its ambassador who was at the center of new tensions with Tehran.
At the time, Iranian newspapers charged that Ambassador Bassam Amush had angered the Iranian authorities by accusing Tehran of “interfering” in Jordan’s “security issues”.
