Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
03AMMAN8242
2003-12-17 11:50:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Amman
Cable title:  

JORDAN-SYRIA RELATIONS BECOME PUBLICLY TESTY

Tags:  PREL MOPS SENV SY JO 
pdf how-to read a cable
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 AMMAN 008242 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/17/2013
TAGS: PREL MOPS SENV SY JO
SUBJECT: JORDAN-SYRIA RELATIONS BECOME PUBLICLY TESTY

REF: A. AMMAN 7805

B. FBIS GMP 20031209000111

C. DAMASCUS 6622

D. DAMASCUS 4937

E. FBIS GMP 20031211000166

F. FBIS GMP 20031211000234

Classified By: Amb. Edward W. Gnehm for reasons 1.5 (b) (d)

-------
SUMMARY
-------

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 AMMAN 008242

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/17/2013
TAGS: PREL MOPS SENV SY JO
SUBJECT: JORDAN-SYRIA RELATIONS BECOME PUBLICLY TESTY

REF: A. AMMAN 7805

B. FBIS GMP 20031209000111

C. DAMASCUS 6622

D. DAMASCUS 4937

E. FBIS GMP 20031211000166

F. FBIS GMP 20031211000234

Classified By: Amb. Edward W. Gnehm for reasons 1.5 (b) (d)

--------------
SUMMARY
--------------


1. (C) Senior GOJ officials have expressed to us recently
growing frustration with increased smuggling, depletion of
water resources, and Syrian military "violations" along and
across the Jordan-Syria border. They have complained about
Syrian unwillingness to restart discussions on a formal
demarcation of the border, despite a formal request from
former PM Abul Ragheb. Jordan and Syria have also clashed on
trade issues, with the Syrian Ambassador in Amman delaying
required no-Israeli-content import certifications and the
Jordanian Trade Ministry temporarily stopping Syrian exports
to Jordan in retaliation. CNN remarks by King Abdullah on
the insecure border touched off a brief war of words in the
press, quickly ended by a publicized phone call between the
two Prime Ministers preventing further "estrangement." The
Jordanians, not surprisingly, place the blame on the SARG and
Syrian actions for the increased tension. Absent Syrian
accommodations on trade and the border, we expect this
tension to continue on and off in the new year, and GOJ
officials are likely to continue to express their frustration
with the Syrians. The current testiness falls into a
familiar pattern, as wider regional changes (i.e. Iraq) have
historically been cause for readjustments in the always
uneasy Syrian-Jordanian relationship. END SUMMARY.

--------------
INCREASED ACTIVITY ALONG JORDAN-SYRIA BORDER
--------------


2. (C) Over the past several weeks, senior Jordanian
officials have mentioned to USG visitors their impatience and
growing irritation with the level of activity along the
Jordan-Syria border, including smuggling of weapons and
explosives and Syrian military "violations" of the border.
King Abdullah raised with A/S Burns November 30 his concerns
with Syrian movement into Jordanian territory after tactical
repositioning of Jordanian border forces (ref a). Vice

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, MG Saud Nsirat, told
visiting Air Force Secretary Roche December 9 that there is
"routine" shooting across the border and numerous incidents
of Syrian troops firing small arms at passing Jordanian
military aircraft. Nsirat expressed irritation at a recent
editorial by a writer in the Syrian press (presumably ref b)
that attacked the Hashemites as tools of American and Israeli
policy in Iraq and the region. Numerous senior GOJ
officials, both military and civilian, have complained to us
that the volume and lethality of contraband smuggled across
the Syrian border into Jordan -- they all assume with the
acknowledge or assistance of the SARG -- have increased in
the past year.


3. (C) Former PM Ali Abul Ragheb complained to the
Ambassador earlier this year that Syrian forces had
"occupied" Jordanian territory in several places (and noted
that Jordanian forces also occupied a smaller amount of land
that should belong to Syria). During a September 2003 visit
to Damascus, then PM Abul Ragheb had discussed with (former)
Syrian PM Miro the possibility of reviving the Jordan-Syria
border commission and implementing a 1992 report recommending
a final border demarcation. The subsequent change of PMs in
both Amman and Damascus has prevented movement on this
request. An official Petra news agency release on December 9
noted that new PM Faisal al-Fayez had spoken with new Syrian
PM al-Itri that day about enhancing bilateral relations.

--------------
SYKES-PICOT THE BEST REFERENCE?
--------------


4. (C) MFA Legal Department head Samer Naber confirmed for
PolCouns December 10 that Jordan has legally demarcated
borders with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, but not with
Syria. When working with legal issues surrounding the Syrian
border, Naber noted, he refers to "an old State Department
report" and British-French demarcation agreements "that came
out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement." He said Syria has over
the past few years ignored requests by Jordan to revive the
joint border commission and come to closure on a border once
and for all. He also mentioned that Syria has permitted
Syrian farmers to drill large numbers of wells along the
border line, depleting the groundwater resources on the
Jordanian side as well (he claimed that the Jordanian army
strictly limits the number of wells drilled near the border
on the Jordanian side). Jordanian military intelligence, he
said, had submitted a report on Syrian water use along the
border earlier this year to PM Abul Ragheb. The report had
led the MFA to send a formal note to the Syrian Embassy on
water use. Even though several months have passed, Naber
sighed, the Syrians have not yet responded.
--------------
TRADE ISSUES ALSO RANKLE
--------------

5. (C) Egyptian DCM Mohammed Khairat (protect) told
PolCouns that Jordan-Syrian tensions extend beyond border
issues to trade as well. He said that senior Jordanian
officials had complained to him last week that the Syrians
had recently been more strict in imposing "trade controls" on
Jordanian goods to ensure that "Israeli" goods did not go
through Jordan to Syria. Worse, the Egyptian reported,
Jordan has heard reports that the SARG has "lobbied" Gulf
States to impose similar restrictions on Jordanian exports.


6. (C) The Secretary General of the Jordanian Ministry of
Industry and Trade confirmed for EconCouns December 14 some
increased trade tensions, which he blamed on the Syrian
Ambassador in Amman. The Syrian, he claimed, "becomes
protectionist" and delays signature of the SARG-required
certification that Jordanian products exported to Syria are
free of Israeli content whenever a Jordanian company is
successful in exporting to Syria. The recent case of a delay
in exports of aluminum foil prompted Jordan to retaliate,
holding up 120 truckloads of Syrian exports to Jordan at the
border for several days until the foil certification was
issued. All this occurred, the SYG noted wryly, despite the
signature two years ago of a Jordan-Syria "free trade"
agreement -- "This is the way the Syrians are."

--------------
ANY DAM PROGRESS?
--------------


7. (C) On the positive side, Jordan Valley Authority
Secretary General Zafer Alem told visiting NEA Senior Science

SIPDIS
Advisor, EconCouns, and Regional Environment Officer recently
that construction of the Al-Wihdeh Dam along the Jordan/Syria
border was moving full speed ahead. In a visit to the
construction site in November, Alem and EmbOffs walked down
to the Yarmouk River bed and along the border, meters from
non-responsive Syrian security posts. Walking into Syrian
territory as they surveyed the weir that had been built to
divert Yarmouk River waters during the dam's construction,
EmbOffs saw bulldozers and heavy equipment building the dam's
buttress on the Syrian side of the border. Work crews cross
back and forth on a daily basis with no difficulty, Alem
said, and no scuffles or administrative problems threaten to
postpone the Al-Wihdeh dam construction schedule. The only
thing Alem lamented was having scaled down the dam capacity
significantly from its original design -- conceived decades
ago -- because Syria has been taking more than its share of
Yarmouk water.

-------------- ---
... AND THE TWO PM'S RESOLVE IT ALL ON THE PHONE
-------------- ---


8. (SBU) Several articles in the local media in the last
two weeks (see refs e and f for examples) have referred to
the tensions in relations, blaming either the King's
interview to CNN during his trip to Washington (in which he
expressed concern over the security of the Syria-Iraq border)
or Syrian press responses (ref b) as the proximate cause of
the crisis. The Jordanian press expressed particular
irritation at Syrian press "attacks" on King Abdullah as an
agent of the U.S. However, according to several stories, the
December 9 call from PM Fayez to PM Itri was "enough to end
the escalation."

--------------
COMMENT
--------------


9. (C) As the King made clear in Washington, there is real
irritation at the top levels of the GOJ with Syrian policy on
the border. The growing list of irritants indicates together
another oscillation in Syrian-Jordanian relations, which
throughout their histories have been subject to sharp
fluctuations, depending on inter-Arab geopolitics and
domestic pressures. The latest tensions may simply reflect
an accumulation of small problems, but it comes against the
backdrop of the King's disappointment with the Syrian
president, a perception of Syrian weakness and defensiveness,
and the eclipse of Iraqi power. Historically, such wider
regional changes have provided occasion for readjustments in
the balance of the Syrian-Jordanian relationship as one or
the other side sees opportunities to redress old grievances
or get the upper hand. However, at this stage, neither side
appears willing to transform testiness into a real
confrontation.
Visit Embassy Amman's classified web site at
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/amman/

or access the site through the State Department's SIPRNET
home page.
GNEHM