Jordan - Government In 1991 Jordan and the PLO had agreed on the principle of confederation between Jordan and whatever Palestinian entity ultimately emerged from the Middle East peace process. In mid-July 1993 Jordan and the PLO had agreed to form six committees to discuss relations between Jordan and the Occupied Territories during a period of transitional Palestinian self-rule. In addition to foreign arrivals, Jordan received large numbers of its own nationals fleeing from the Gulf region. About 300,000 of these expatriates remained in Jordan after the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991, as the rulers of Kuwait had regarded most Jordanian and Palestinian residents as collaborators with the Iraqi occupation forces. While Jordan welcomed the agreement concluded between Israel and the PLO as progress towards regional stability, it remained concerned by aspects of the Declaration of Principles which affected it directly and over which it had not been consulted. In January 1994, after King Hussein had twice warned that Jordan might otherwise pursue its own agenda in the ongoing peace negotiations with Israel, the PLO agreed to sign a comprehensive economic co-operation agreement with Jordan, and to establish a joint committee to coordinate financial policy in the Occupied Territories. Later in the same month Jordan signed a draft security accord with the PLO, which established principles for co-operation on security issues. The reaction of the Jordanian Government to the Cairo Agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in May was relatively subdued. In July 1993 the USA was reported to have informed Jordan that it must make payments to the UN´s Compensation Fund for Kuwait if it continued to receive deliveries of petroleum from Iraq. In mid-September however US President Clinton announced that some $30m. economic and military aid to Jordan was to be released in recognition of the country´s enforcement of sanctions against Iraq and of its role in the Middle East peace process. Jordan´s new policy on Iraq was welcomed by Saudi Arabia, but was viewed with suspicion by Egypt and Syria for fear that it might lead to a further US-backed strategic reorientation in the region, bringing together the USA, Israel, Turkey and Jordan in a military alliance designed to protect Israeli and US interests in the region. In December 1997 Jordan recalled its charge d´affaires in Baghdad and expelled a number of Iraqi diplomats from Jordan in protest at the execution two days earlier of four Jordanians by the Iraqi authorites. Although the executions caused tension in relations between the two countries, Iraq insisted that it had not intended to provoke Jordan by carrying out the sentences and, later in the same month, the two countries signed an agreement under which Iraq was to supply 4.8m. metric tons of crude petroleum and refined petroleum products to Jordan in 1998. In January 1998 more than 50 Jordanian prisoners and detainees were released by Iraq in a gesture of goodwill. His Majesty King Abdullah bin al-Hussein is the 43rd generation direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. King Abdullah assumed his constitutional powers as King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on February 7,1999, the day his father, the late King Hussein, passed away. King Abdullah is committed to building on the legacy left by the late King Hussein to further Jordan's democratic institutionalization and political pluralism, while working for a just and comprehensive peace in a climate of openness and tolerance. More info: King Abdullah