Jordan's King Abdullah II and Syrian President Bashar Assad have once again postponed an important meeting amidst leaks of soured political relations between the neighbouring Arab states.
Abdullah and Assad agreed to postpone until mid-November their Joint Higher Jordanian-Syrian Committee meeting, slated for Thursday, under the auspices of Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit and his Syrian counterpart Mohammad Naji Ettri, the official news agency Petra reported late on Tuesday.
The agreement came in telephone conversations two days after ministerial and technical teams conducted intensive preparatory negotiations ahead of the Higher Committee's 12th meeting.
Petra did not mention the reason behind the postponement, the second in three months.
"Both leaders agreed to postpone the meeting after they discussed "means of boosting bilateral ties in various fields and the situation across the region," it noted.
Sources close to the talks said key ministers failed to reach compromises over thorny issues such as sharing Yarmouk River waters and the fate of 210 Jordanian detainees in Syrian jails.
A people's panel for the support of Jordanian prisoners in Syria, known as "Release Us," complained that the number of detainees has doubled over the past weeks.
The security apparatus in Jordan is also unhappy with continued infiltration of armed elements and arms trafficking into the kingdom through the joint borders.
Political sources in Amman said soured political ties between the two Arab states are the result of conflicting opinions over issues such as the political maps in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
While Damascus, a close ally of Tehran, moves on a collision course with Washington, Jordan is a strategic ally of the US administration and also a cornerstone of what has been labelled the "moderate Arab Quartet," alongside Cairo, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
At the outset of their tenure in 1999 and 2000, Abdullah visited Damascus three times whereas Assad came to Amman twice.
Over the past two days, ministerial and technical committees held intensive negotiations in preparation for the Higher Committee meeting.
Of the outstanding issues was the need to reactivate and expand a joint free trade agreement, sealed in mid-2002.
Jordan complains that Syria hampers the flow of Lebanese produce-laden trucks heading to Amman. It also hampers the passage of re-exported cattle from Uruguay and Australia.
The drought-stricken kingdom is keen, meanwhile, on maintaining the flow of imported Syrian wheat at a rate of 500,000 tonnes per year.
Water-sharing has been the most crucial dispute since the two countries built the Al Wehdah Dam following a two-decade delay, official sources said.
They say Syria's 36 dams and 3,400 artesian wells detoured waters away from the reservoir, which collected only 10 out of its 110-million-cubic-metres capacity.
In June, Syria refused to receive a technical Jordanian team to discuss the water-sharing crisis.
Set up in 1996, the Joint Committee convenes once every year in either of the two capitals. The volume of annual trade between the two countries is in the region of 560 million dollars. dpa sqh jh
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