Jordan expels Iraqi diplomat after bread riots .
Rana Sabbagh
AMMAN 1996-08-23
Jordan , which has blamed Iraq for bread riots last week , has asked an Iraqi diplomat to leave , official and diplomatic sources said on Friday .
The main Friday prayers in southern Jordan that were the starting point for the riots a week ago passed peacefully under tight security imposed by the army with only brief demonstrations reported .
Adel Ibrahim , the Iraqi embassy 's press attache , was asked to leave " because he was carrying out duties incompatible with diplomatic norms " , one source told Reuters , implying he was accused of spying .
Ibrahim told Reuters by telephone from his embassy office in Amman that he " had not been notified " of any explusion order .
The government declined official comment .
Ibrahim 's assistant , Hussein Khalaf , was expelled earlier this year for similar reasons amid rising tension in bilateral ties after King Hussein began calling for change in Baghdad following top Iraqi defections in August 1995 .
Iraq retaliated then by expelling a junior administrator working in the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad but has continued its policy of trying to avoid public conflicts with Jordan -- its only secure route to the rest of the world .
Jordan has accused Iraq and a local pro-Baghdad party for the country 's worst unrest in seven years which erupted after it almost doubled the prices of bread last week under radical economic reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund .
In Karak , where two days of riots flared last Friday , a few hundred young men lingered outside Omari mosque on leaving , shouting slogans for about 15 minutes .
" Disperse , abstain from forming groups and help maintain order , " army officers , who has enforced a loose curfew since the riots , told the crowd through loudspeakers .
The men shouted " Allahu Akbar " ( God is Greatest ) as a former Islamist deputy , Ahmed Kafawin , told soldiers the crowd would not cause trouble .
He had earlier mounted the mosque 's pulpit to demand release of detainees , an end to raids on houses and the cancelling of the bread price rises .
Armoured cars had patrolled streets in Karak , traditional bastion of communist ideology and Baath socialism that swept the region in the 1950s , and guarded entrances to the hill-top city famed for its Crusader castle before the prayers .
There was also heavy security in the crowded centre of Amman , where smaller clashes had erupted last Saturday , but Friday prayers at the main mosque ended quietly as police in full riot gear looked on .
The Jordanian Arab Socialist Baath Party , which has one deputy in the 80-seat lower house of parliament , has denied involvement in unrest which it blamed on government policies and rising economic hardship .
Government attempts to link the rioting to foreign influence has been treated with derision by those in the streets who blame the protests on severe economic hardships .