Work was started yesterday on a dam on the Yarmuk River, a tributary in Jordan of the Jordan River, as the first stage in an Arab program to bar the river waters to Israel, it was reported here today from Amman.
The work on the projected Mokheiba Dam was launched in a ceremony near Al Adasiah, about 80 miles north of Amman. Ali Nassough Tasher, vice-chairman of the Jordanian Development Board, declared during the ceremony that the plan to build the dam was aimed primarily at “saving the land which would be affected by Israel’s usurpation of the largest part of the Jordan River’s water and diverting it out of the river’s basin.” Israel has developed a huge irrigation pipeline project which draws on the Jordan River through Lake Tiberias.
The Yarmuk River dam, a $28,700,000 project, is to be the first stage of a Jordan River diversion program approved at an Arab summit conference last month in Alexandria.
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