US embassy cable - 03AMMAN6580

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 006580 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ARN, NEA/PA, NEA/AIA, INR/NESA, R/MR, 
I/GNEA, B/BXN, B/BRN, NEA/PPD, NEA/IPA FOR ALTERMAN 
USAID/ANE/MEA 
LONDON FOR GOLDRICH 
PARIS FOR O'FRIEL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
 
TAGS: KMDR JO 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON IRAQ 
 
 
                        Summary 
 
-- The lead story in all papers today, October 15, is 
on King Abdullah's meetings with senior officials in 
Singapore on the sidelines of the Asian Economic 
Summit. During his meeting with the President of 
Singapore, the King stressed his interest in 
developing the Port of Aqaba to serve Iraq and the 
region. All papers report international responses and 
criticisms to the draft U.S. resolution on Iraq and 
quote President Bush in statements to the U.S. TV 
station "Tribune Broadcasting" as saying that he 
shoulders the responsibility of his policy in Iraq. 
Papers also highlight developments in Iraq, reporting 
the suicide car bomb in front of the Turkish Embassy 
in Baghdad. On the Palestinian-Israeli front, papers 
reported that Israeli authorities raided Rafah again. 
 
On the domestic front, all papers reported that the 
Jordanian cabinet approved the training of 32,000 
Iraqi police at a cost of $1.5 billion. Al-Arab     Al- 
Yawm is the only paper that reported opposition by 
Chalabi's party to this decision. 
 
             Editorial Commentary on Iraq 
 
-- "Meaningless Conferences" 
 
Chief Editor Taher Udwan writes on the back page of 
independent, mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm 
(10/15):  "Without a conviction by all parties in Iraq 
that the U.S. occupation is just temporary and not 
here to stay, chaos and bombings are just going to 
continue. Moreover, the Turkish military presence will 
be an incentive to expand the circle of domestic wars. 
In light of this fact, the conferences that are being 
held outside Iraq to discuss the reconstruction of 
Iraq are deemed meaningless. This is because they seem 
like venues for ministers from the Iraqi Governing 
Council to exercise their abilities to present 
proposals and ideas after it has been proven that they 
are marginalized and they can do nothing when they are 
in Baghdad because Administrator Bremer is there and 
he is everything and he only listens to ideas from 
Kissinger, Wolfowitz and Thomas Friedman." 
 
-- "Turkey .. First" 
 
Daily columnist Urayb Rintawi, who writes on the    op- 
ed page of center-left, influential Arabic daily 
Al-Dustour (10/15), maintains that Turkey's entry into 
Iraq could become a point for a strategic 
transformation in all contexts of the Iraqi crisis 
which is open to all sorts of possibilities. . . He 
says: "It is truly regrettable that Turkey's decision 
to cross the borders into Iraq as dictated by the 
United States comes at a time when Islamists are in 
power and in parliament . They shoulder the burden of 
a decision that could neither be taken by the(Turkish) 
military institution nor by its National Security 
Council." 
 
Rintawi concludes by saying that during and after the 
war on Iraq, Turkey behaved on the basis of "Turkey 
First" .. He notes that self interest in both cases 
speaks out for it. 
 
-- "The Phenomenon of Suicide Amongst the Ranks of the 
Occupation Forces . !!" 
 
Commenting on reports in U.S. newspapers that the rate 
of suicide amongst U.S. soldiers in Iraq has gone up 
and that a team has been sent to Iraq to investigate 
the situation, columnist George Haddad writes on the 
op-ed page of center-left, influential Arabic daily 
Al-Dustour(10/15): "The influential ruling gang in 
Washington - which is made up of oil, weapons, and 
Zionist mafias - does not care about the rise in the 
number of those in the occupation forces who get 
killed or those who commit suicide in as much as they 
care about keeping the American people in the dark and 
ignorant of what this gang is planning and doing in 
their name and in the name of their interests." 
GNEHM