Jordan's King blasts military intervention in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Jordan's King Abdullah II finds "somewhat ludicrous" the idea of intervention in Iraq while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has the Middle East in turmoil.\nAlso, despite speculation in Washington and elsewhere, the United States is not sending troops into Jordan to prepare for an invasion of Iraq to oust President Saddam Hussein, Abdullah said Sunday.\n"That has not happened, and I don't think will ever happen," Abdullah said on CNN's "Late Edition."\nThe chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden, who plans hearings this week about Iraq, said he does not expect imminent military action.\nAbdullah, who meets President Bush in Washington on Thursday, said he will not talk with Bush about any plans to attack Iraq. Rather, the king will try to advance the idea of an international conference to find a solution to Israel's bitter, decades-long confrontation with the Palestinians. He also will explain to Bush the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians.\n"The problem is, trying to take on the question of Iraq with the lack of positive movement on the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab track seems, at this point, somewhat ludicrous," the king said.\nBush and other administration officials have talked openly of waging a war against Iraq with the single purpose of achieving a "regime change" by removing President Saddam Hussein. Bush accuses Hussein of supporting terrorists and trying to amass weapons of mass destruction in violation of commitments he made after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.\nThe United States has invited six Iraqi opposition groups to Washington next month for talks about the country's future.\nThe New York Times reported this month that administration planners planned to launch airstrikes and commando raids from Jordan against neighboring Iraq once Bush gave the word to go. Jordan immediately denied it, even escorting journalists on a tour of a desert air base to knock down the idea that it was being upgraded to serve the Americans.\nBiden, D-Del., disagreed with Abdullah's assertion that dialogue would be a better solution in Iraq than violence. "Dialogue with Saddam is useless," Biden said.\nHe said, however, that "absent serious provocation by Iraq," he does not expect military action, at least before November.