This year's WEF in Jordan was a near repeat of the 2003 meeting except that this time round Jordan stands poised to make much political capital, writes Amy Henderson from the Dead Sea resort The 2005 World Economic Forum hosted on the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea didn't have the star power of the first meeting two years ago, which collected the United States secretary of state, a top European Union presidential delegation, the Russian foreign minister and the United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan. Nevertheless, this year's event is likely to serve the Jordanian authorities well as it strives to polish its tarnished international image. Jordan has been under the gun since King Abdullah II's visit to Washington in late March, when, it has been reported, the US administration pulled him onto the carpet for not moving forward with reforms. King Abdullah II's visit to the US coincided with slew of bad international press, beginning with a commentary by Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post, who accused the monarch of duplicity in his dealings with Iraq and the US. Specifically, the writer accused the monarch of "exacerbating" Sunni- Shia tensions by "championing" the Sunni minority, who were the base of Baathist power and of the ongoing insurgency. The accusation was particularly problematic as it followed Jordanian-American tensions over the king's warning in last winter of the emergence of a "Shia crescent" stretching from Iran to Lebanon. Hoagland's commentary was followed by other reports on the BBC and in Al-Hayat, The Daily Star- International Herald Tribune of Lebanon, and, most recently, in The Nation -- all of which observed that Jordan had become more repressive as the so-called Arab spring bloomed in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. They also inferred that the monarch was in league with corrupt businessmen in the kingdom. Closer to home, while the king was planted in Washington, the Arabic press was tracking Jordan's embroilment in diplomatic crises with Arab states. In the monarch's absence, Jordan's then-foreign minister withdrew Jordan's ambassador from Baghdad in an apparent fit of pique over Iraqi accusations that a Jordanian had been responsible for a suicide bombing in the village of Hilleh that killed 125 Iraqis, and, at the Arab Summit in Algiers, introduced a new peace initiative. The proposal earned Arab states' swift condemnation, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa accused Jordan of trying to turn the Arab Summit into the "summit of normalisation" with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. Given Jordan's continuing dependence on crucial foreign aid and subsidised oil supplies, allowing the country to fall out of grace with either Washington or the Arab neighbours -- or even to be seen to have done so whether at home or abroad -- is rarely sound policy. So when King Abdullah returned from Washington, rehabilitating the country's image became a top priority. It began with the formation of a new government that replaced the errant foreign minister and which removed key officials associated with the introduction to parliament of a highly controversial draft law that would curb the political influence of Jordan's 13 professional associations, the most prominent civil society institutions in the country. The draft was entirely out of sync with domestic political developments elsewhere. The minister overseeing the drafting of the National Agenda, a document that is supposed to chart Jordan's social, economic and political reform process, was made minister of royal court, meaning that reforms would be left not to the government, which had proven inept at realising them, but would be administered from the royal court itself. Shortly after, the monarch received a group of Iraqi journalists who relayed the message that support for the insurgency, the questioning of the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections in January and the portrayal of the new Iraqi government as a US puppet in the Jordanian press were aggravating the situation on the ground in Iraq. The visit of the Iraqi press preceded a visit from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, signalling that the axe had been buried, for the time being. The same day, the king received the Saudis. And then the WEF convened in Jordan. "Circumstantially, Jordan did very well from it," says Fares Braizat, a political analyst at the University of Jordan's Centre for Strategic Studies. The event emerged as a showcase for American pro-peace and democracy foreign policy and lifted the curtain on Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Jordan's role as master of ceremonies and the attentions of the international press allowed it to bring its message back into harmony. King Abdullah's closing speech credited "friends of the Arab world" for bringing the region "one step closer" to cultivating good governance and human rights, to creating economies that deliver opportunity and to bringing peace, with justice, to the region, while an interview with The Newsweek projected a new, more positive Jordanian spin on events in Iraq. "King Abdullah and Queen Rania's speeches, both in presentation and in content were amazing, and because of the leverage and weight of the WEF, the media will convey this abroad," he said, adding that attendees were also impressed by the content of debates at the forum, which will play positively abroad even though the WEF itself, and not the event's host, determines the content and format of every session. "This is going to help rehabilitate Jordan's image outside." Especially vis-�-vis Egypt, Jordan's main competitor for regional influence, whose recent announcement of constitutional reform which again created the appearance that Jordan was lagging behind neighbouring states in its own domestic political reform efforts. The optimism with which the king spoke of Iraq's future and its role in the region was in striking contradiction to Egyptian criticisms of Iraq and American foreign policy there. In one session that grouped Moussa, Zebari and US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Liz Cheney on stage for a debate on "people power", Moussa tread on a sacred cow. Iraqi elections, he said, would have no impact on the region. "The US said Iraq would be an example for the region," he said. "Iraq actually has a number of factors that concerns us. There is a danger of religious splits, sectarian strife and civil war." The message was in striking contradiction to the monarch's citation of Iraqi elections on 30 January as a "turning point" in the country's history and "created a positive energy" for reform in the Middle East. The commentary eclipsed Ahmed Nazif's promotion of Egypt's vast economic reform package and its political reforms. The feel-good factor emanating from the Jordanian rhetoric was also bolstered by highly symbolic gestures captured on camera, such as the handshake between Zebari and Israeli Cabinet Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (with Jordan's minister of water just in the background), the warm embrace between Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Mohamed Dahlan and Israeli Vice-Premier Ehud Olmert and the announcement of a $15 million feasibility study on the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal and two major development projects for Jordan, financed by Gulf Arab states. The latter appeared as a strong signal of support for Jordan's stability and for the government's management of domestic opposition. "The investment deals were enormous compared to Jordan's efforts to attract investments," says Braizat. "The arrests of [opposition figures] in Egypt are not a sign of stability. Here, the regime is tolerating the debate about democracy and reform. Jordan wants to show, or the international community wants to show that the countries of the peace process, the countries that pursue stable transitions are gaining advantages."
