Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said Jordan is a stable country, owing its security to the wisdom of its leadership and its people's awareness, which are its source of strength and the guarantor of its safety.
He said in an interview aired late yesterday by Al Arabiya Satellite Television that security was tight along the Kingdom's borders where its armed forces and security agencies stood at the ready, adding that the Jordanian intelligence apparatus is known for its efficiency and professionalism in dealing with information.
"We pass on information in a way to protect the security of our country, precisely like done by Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. It is natural to exchange information", he said, adding that the proficiency of the intelligence bodies are counted on to a large extent.
Ensour also said the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood group was licensed as a society just four months ago, although it had existed in the country for over half a century.
"The historically known Muslim Brotherhood has been working in Jordan since 1964, but it was only lately discovered that it was unlicensed and that there has been a flaw in the licensing process. Legal changes had taken place that lost it its right to exist and necessitated that it rectified its status, but it didn't. However, some of the individuals (its members) did register the society according to the law", said the prime minister.
"This is why it is a new, six-month-old society, although it is the oldest group whose licensing was not opportune or a group that had been unlicensed in the eye of the law", he added.
Ensour pointed out that the Islamic Action Front had split from the Muslim Brotherhood, thus creating a society and a political party, adding that the Jordanian law forbids both society and party from any external expansions or receiving orders or financing from abroad, which is purely for regulatory considerations, but not a procedure meant against any other group.
"This is not directed against Hamas, Egypt's Brotherhood or the world's Brotherhood. This is an utterly organisational matter. One who desires to obtain licensing should be Jordanian, with no expanses abroad. If he had such expansion and had won an election and headed a government, he would carry out the foreign agendas of another country, and then there might be a clash of interests", he explained.
Ensour also said Jordan has for over half a century had no political prisoners in the country or asylum seekers abroad.
On Syrian refugees in Jordan, he said the cost of hosting about 1.5 million Syrians in the Kingdom amounts to $3 billion per annum, including the direct costs of food, medicine, housing, transport, schools and health, in addition to indirect incalculable costs mainly pollution, crime and drugs.
However, he said, the Kingdom had only received $1.2 billion in 2014, or 40 per cent of the amount, from the United Nations and donor countries in European and Arab states, while the state treasury had to bear 60 per cent of the total cost in a country with limited resources.
The prime minister categorically denied that Jordan would launch a military offensive in southern Syria, but said the Kingdom would welcome the setting up of a UN zone to supply Daraa and Suwaida provinces with food and health services and secure the repatriation of the displaced people to the border regions.
"We will not cross our borders whatsoever unless we feel that a target or party want to strike us", he added.
The premier said Jordan had not closed its border with Syria, adding that two posts between Daraa and (the Jordanian town of) Ramtha had been sealed off for over two years, while the Nasib-Jaber border post was closed about two months ago by the Syrian rebels.
He said communications had been ruptured and that "we cannot enter goods to the Syrian side where both the Syrian army and the Free (Syrian) Army have presence, and that the convoys are unsafe and could not reach safely due to this raging war".
Ensour said Jordan backs the unity of Syria and Iraq as well, and rejects any division of either country, and would provide help if Iraqi tribes on Jordan's border and the Iraqi government asked for such assistance to confront the Daesh militant group. He said Jordan would not allow arming Iraqi tribes without the consent of the Iraqi government, stressing the Kingdom's non-intervention in Iraqi affairs.
Commenting on Iran's regional role, Ensour urged Tehran not to use "its successful pacts against its neighbours or back those seeking to foment discord and sectarianism", adding "Iran has the choice either to be a closed, extremist sectarian state hostile to its neighbours, or a big, responsible neighbour leading the (Muslim) nation to success.
He said Islam had been the target of unprecedented abuses as the faith had lost its image in the world, which "looks at us as beasts eating each other".
"We have to stick together. Iran is not an enemy, and it can be the most precious friend. The onus is on her. Iran is a power that had made clear gains after the Iraqi war, let it best use this matter. The clash of civilisations had degenerated into a sectarian conflict, and this is unacceptable", he said.
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