Jordan
has reportedly asked Washington to deploy two Patriot missile batteries on its 360-km
long border with Syria for protection against incoming missile strikes.
Unnamed
Jordanian
sources tell the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat King Abdullah made the
request to visiting U.S. President Barack Obama during their March 22 talks in
Amman.
The
sources say the monarch’s request received a favorable response and two Patriot
systems currently online in Kuwait and Qatar will be deployed to Jordan in the
coming weeks.
The final of six Patriot missile batteries deployed to Turkey was
declared operational under NATO command and control in mid-February.
In
total this year, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States provided two
batteries each to augment Turkey’s defenses along its along
its 900-kilometer frontier with Syria.
News
of the purported Patriots for Jordan comes within 24 hours of remarks by Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel in Washington.
Assad
warned the crisis in his country could spill over to
the Hashemite Kingdom while Hagel told a Senate hearing
200 intelligence, logistics and operations specialists from the U.S. Army's 1st
Armored Division were being sent to Jordan to help contain the Syria violence.
In his hour-long
interview with official al-Ikhbariya TV
channel, Assad said,
“I cannot believe
hundreds (of rebels) are entering Syria with their weapons while Jordan is
capable of arresting any single person with a light weapon for going to resist
in Palestine.
“We wish our Jordanian
neighbors would realize that... the fire will not stop at our borders. The
whole world knows Jordan is just as exposed (to the crisis) as Syria.”
Hagel flies to the Middle
East tomorrow, Saturday, to meet with leaders from Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and the UAE.
He told the Senate hearing
the Pentagon was sending a new Army headquarters to replace an ad hoc
organization established last year to help the Jordanian military cope with
Syrian refugees, prepare for the possible use of poison gas and provide command
and control for “stability operations,” presumably in a post-Assad Syria.
Slightly more than 200 troops would be involved.
Separately, the Beirut
daily al-Akhbar, which is close to
Assad, Hezbollah and Iran, reveals in its front-page lead today that two Assad
emissaries specifically asked Amman of late to stop the flow of rebels and arms
to Syria across its borders.
The paper names the two
Assad representatives as Syria's
Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad and its National Security
Bureau chief Ali Mamlouk.
It says Mekdad travelled Jan.
31 to Amman, where he conferred with his opposite number Nasser Judeh and the Director
of Office of King Abdullah, Imad Fakhoury.
Al-Akhbar says Mekdad’s meetings -- in which the Jordanian
side denied allowing the free movement of rebels and arms to Syria -- “were extremely
cordial.”
Mamlouk’s follow through secret
trip to Amman took place on March 17, when Jordan’s intelligence chief Lt. Gen.
Faisal al-Shobaki reiterated the denial.
