“We categorically
deny this report and consider such allegations untrue and unacceptable,” a
government official was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.
The Guardian
report, which was played up by Aljazeera over the past 24 hours, said that the
jamming was “traced to Jordan, which appears to have retaliated angrily after
the collapse of a deal that would have allowed football fans there free access
to the matches.”
The report said
that the paper was in exclusive possession of secret documents tracing “five
episodes of jamming definitively to a location near Salt in Jordan, northeast
of the capital Amman, confirmed by technical teams using geolocation technology.”
The unidentified
Jordanian official acknowledged that negotiations between the Jordanian
government and the Qatari satellite channel to get access to the matches
carried exclusively by Aljazeera had failed because the network’s offer was unacceptable
to Amman and came “too late.”
“However, the
Jordanian government kept the outcome of the negotiations secret and continued
to deal with Aljazeera bureau in Amman in a professional manner,” he said.
