Despite an accord signed ten days ago in Cairo between King Hussein and Palestinian guerrilla leader Yassir Arafat, tension remains high in Jordan and the two sides continue to trade accusations and invective, Israeli experts on Jordanian affairs reported today. They noted that the Jordanian Minister of Information employed bitter language yesterday when he accused the guerrillas of stalling their departure from Amman, one of the conditions of the Hussein-Arafat agreement. Arafat, in an interview with the Yugoslavian News Agency, likened the situation in Jordan to the war in Vietnam and the Hussein regime to the Saigon government. The Israeli experts said that accusations of robbery and rape by Jordanian forces were contained in a letter sent by Arafat to the inter-Arab truce supervisory committee in Amman. The Israelis said that there has been no change for the worse in the Jordanian situation during the last 24 hours but that it is clear that implementation of the Hussein-Arafat agreement is taking place in an atmosphere of suspicion and recrimination.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
