ALGIERS - Jordan's King Abdullah II has ordered the immediate return of Amman's top diplomat to Iraq to ease tensions between the two countries, Jordanian Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez told AFP on Monday.
Speaking after a meeting in Algiers with outgoing Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar, on the eve of an Arab summit, Fayez said: "His Majesty King Abdullah ordered the immediate return of the Jordanian charge d'affaires to Iraq.
"This move comes as a gesture of goodwill from Jordan in order to ease the tension between our countries."
Jordan on Sunday recalled its charge d'affaires Dimai Haddad from Baghdad, saying it feared for his safety due to anti-Jordan demonstrations over the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a devastating suicide bombing.
Hours later Baghdad retaliated by recalling its ambassador from Amman, Atta Abdel Wahab, and accused Jordan of not doing enough to help prevent attacks in Iraq.
Fayez, who is leading Jordan's delegation to a two-day Arab summit which opens Tuesday in Algeria, described his meeting with Yawar as "excellent".
He said he told Yawar that "terrorism has no nationality and it is impossible that a Jordanian" could carry out an attack such at the suicide bombing that killed 118 people in Hilla, south of Baghdad, on February 28.
"We have good relations with Iraq and we want these relations to persist," he said. "I hope that this will only be a summer cloud in our relations with Iraq."
The Jordanian prime minister also insisted that the alleged Jordanian perpetrator of the Hilla attack, Raed al-Banna, "was not killed in Hilla".
As Yawar and Fayez met, the foreign ministers of Jordan and Iraq, Hani Mulki and Hoshyar Zebari, respectively, also held talks in an effort to defuse the crisis between their countries.
The Hilla bombing was claimed by a group run by Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was sentenced to death in Jordan last year for the murder of a US diplomat.
03/21/2005 20:03 GMT