Jordanian P.M. Bakhet Told DIPLOMACY Chairman Dr. Limb: "Unless the Palestinian Issue Is Solved, There Will Be No Peace In the Middle East"
Dr. Thok-kyu Limb, chairman of DIPLOMACY (left), with Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf Bakhet, during their exclusive interview at the Hotel Lotte on Aug. 31, 2006.
Question: Your Excellency Prime Minister of Jordan Dr. Marouf Bakhet, would you tell me the purpose of your visit to Korea this time? Answer: It is my first visit to Korea and I am so much impressed. I knew a lot about Korea from before. But, I thought that I could come and see by myself the opportunities in which we can increase our bilateral relations. In fact, this visit included attending the ILO meeting, which is a regional meeting in Asia. It was an international level organization in Busan on Aug. 29, 2006. Jordan has signed the Decent Work Agreement to improve the standard of living and the treatment of our workers. We are committed to this and, of course, it was a chance for me to meet His Excellency the President. We talked about our relations and we discussed the regional issues as well the future of Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine of course. During my stay in Seoul, I had the chance to meet Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook and we discussed our bilateral relations as well. We signed an agreement, a memorandum of understanding, while we are here. That is for occupational and vocational training. We are seeking assistance from the Korean government and the pharmaceutical sector who want to train our people here on the level of after high school and before engineers. We want higher skilled technicians in certain fields which Korea has advanced. It was a chance, this visit again, to see for myself the way Korean experience has made it. I found the country very clean, the infrastructure is good and people are disciplined.
Q: What is your impression of Korean President Roh Moo-hyun? A: Of course, you have a great President. He is a good friend to His Majesty of Jordan. They all admire Jordan as an evolved state of the Middle East. Jordan is secure and we have a lot in common with South Korea. We are like-minded people. We are peaceful loving countries. And we both contribute to peacebuilding forces, international U.N. forces. I thought you are just like us. As much as you want peace for yourself, you want peace for your neighbors and the world at large. So this is what Korea and Jordan can contribute to the cause of peace. Korea is very good. I am impressed with the experience. More than that, you developed and improved the standard of living of the people and headed toward industrialization and Korea is a success story.
Q: What are the economic conditions in your country today? A: We are doing very well in the economy and, of course, it is the vision of His Majesty. He wants Jordan to be modern into the 21st Century and he is focusing on the economy. We are doing extremely well, with an annual growth of 6-7% against all odds. You know Jordan's location and the problems that we are facing all around us - Palestine and Israel, Iraq in the East, and now Lebanon. So, Jordan is against all the problems that we are faced with. Still, we can not only maintain security and stability of the country but even progress further. And a lot of reforms have been adopted by His Majesty, whether it is on the economic level or the political level. We are doing well in moving our society towards democracy and reforming our political life in general. This government has introduced even recently four, five new party laws separately. We have new press and publications law. His Majesty lately has started us to cut down as much as possible from the death penalty. So we are even on the human rights side achieving so much. All society is really open and we are doing very well.
Q: What is the best way to solve Lebanon's problems? A: His Majesty immediately, if you are following the news, ordered the first aircraft to land in Beirut airport after the destruction of the runway. Our army has managed to secure the landing of the first aircraft. Then, Jordan became the gateway or the channel to send any assistance to the Lebanese people. The Jordanian people stood by the Lebanese people and we are trying to help them. And His Majesty is supporting Prime Minister Fouad Siniora or whatever the Lebanese government wants. The most important thing now is to stand behind the Lebanese people. And there is some danger, which I hope they stay united in position. Because of the problem of Hezbollah, the Lebanese will take care of themselves and hopefully solve this problem.
Q: Would you tell me the best way to solve the relations between Israel and Palestine? A: The two-state solution which President Bush has adopted a few years ago, it did not progress. Let me tell you one thing. The President used to a certain point during the Lebanon crisis, the term "root causes". I quite like the term and it is good the American President has started talking about root causes. What I want to tell you is that Lebanon is a symptom. It is a symptom of the Palestinian crisis. So, if he goes back and keeps talking about the root causes, the root causes of what happened in Lebanon is in Palestine. Unless the Arab-Israeli conflict is not solved, the Palestinian question, and unless his vision which was translated into the road map, unless it is implemented, then we can see an independent rival Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in a democratic way. The whole Middle East will remain in this crisis. Because, the Palestinian problem, what originated even the violence in the region, even the idea of terrorism or the term terrorism, started from the feeling that injustice has been done. Unless the Palestinian issue is solved, there will be no peace in the region, we hope. There was the Arab Peace Initiative which was adopted in Beirut in 2002. It is good. It addressed the Israeli security concerns. At the same time, it drew the principles for any future peace. So, we should go back to it, enough of the term agreements. This step-by-step approach has been a failure. We need to solve the problem directly. We need to move away from the crisis management to contain the conflict, to solve and address the problem directly and enter into final negotiations. The outline of any solution to any of the Palestinian issue is now well known to everybody. Hopefully, His Majesty will try to come and visit to address the masses. Probably, he will encourage the Americans to go back to the two-state solution of Israeli-Palestinians and he is encouraging both Palestinians and Israelis to go back to the negotiating table.
Q: What is the best way to solve the Iraqi problems? A: Of course, Iraqis have to forge a big alliance among the components of the Iraq society, the components like the Kurds, and the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Turkmen, they have to get together and forge a big alliance. In this case, they will isolate the few violence. But, you cannot exclude any element of Iraq society. Because if you exclude, like the Sunnis or the Kurds or the Shiites, the country will remain unstable. Unless they get their act together, the major components will isolate the very few violence. So, the whole political process that Jordan encourage and support on Iraq and the reconciliation plan of the present Prime Minister Al-Maliki, it should be encouraged.
Q: What is the vision of Jordan in the 21st Century? A: His Majesty wants to set Jordan as a model. He is moving fast on this. That is why he encourages us, for example, to come to Korea and to go to other nations of successful stories to see what can we learn from their experience. Of course, he wants Jordan to move ahead and to meet the 21st Century, the futures, challenges.
Q: What are the prospects of relations between Korea and Jordan? A: There is a lot of prospects. Trade volume is good. We are thinking of taking our relation to another level. When I met your Prime Minister, Han Myeong-sook, I told her that we are not happy with the level. The volume of trade is good. We import about US$265 million from Korea, while we export to Korea little. But, we can increase this total volume. On the political level, we can coordinate our positions and, in the international arena, we can exchange views regularly. We can coordinate anything with the United Nations and other international organizations. On the security level, we can exchange information because security is needed in every country, to stay away from terrorism. So, we are experiencing this and we can exchange information. For example, you had that incident for Koreans in Iran. At that time, Jordan interfered for the safety of the Korean friends. And on the cultural level, we can exchange visits, views, programs. Now, one small thing that was taken. The Korean language will be taught to Jordanian students in Jordan University. I thought this type of program brings the people together, closer. This is a testimony of the friendship. Because we look highly at the Korean values, we have different values. Some of them are good but some of them are not good. This leads me to think of the future. Of course, we can learn a lot from each other. For example, I was referring earlier to the vocational training, at the technician level. I know that you have certain good values that you have taken advantage of to progress. You are disciplined people and you work in a team. That is why your industry has been successful. If we go more industrialized, and more into the new life of addressing the computer, doing everything through electronics, people will be like instruments and you will lose the qualities that you are good at, the social fabric of the society may change. You should be careful about it. Today, I have been into the IT dream show. Everything you do is by computer, so you are part of it. You become more individual. You don't have to even talk to others. You got your work, your computer will tell you where to go. But talking about our relations, there is a lot of potential that we can take.
Q: What do you see as the new role for the United Nations in the future? A: The United Nations, they have changed a lot in fact in order to try and improve the efficiency of the United Nations. But the key element of the Security Council is the problem. As long as the present situation remains, there is a dominant force and it has to change in some way to include other nations as well, to expand it a bit, to express more views. But, the world has changed from the Second World War. It is not only the Americans, Russians, British, and France. Now, there are other important factors in life and they have to be represented. We will support the change.
Q: Despite the big number of Arabic countries, there is no permanent Arab nation on the Security Council. A: Yes. There are big countries, much more powerful economically than Britain probably. Look at Japan, India, Brazil or your country. If you are invited, you would be almost 50 million. Look at the production, GDP and other nations that are coming up now. So the world is changing.
Q: Do you have any plan to reopen your embassy here? A: In fact, His Majesty wanted to establish an embassy here. It is at the top of our priority. We planned last year in fact to establish three embassies - Korea, Europe and another one. But the problem was only financial. So it was postponed. Hopefully, we will do it as soon as possible because fuel prices have gone up so much and it was only financial. But we look forward to establishing it as soon as possible.
Q: Have you considered more tourism ties? There is a market of 10 million tourists to be tapped in Korea. A: Yes. We have a lot to offer in Jordan. Jordan is a historic place. It was a crossroad to all civilizations. Most importantly is that we have a huge Christian sight. Christ was baptized in Jordan. There are so many occasions for Moses for example, when he crossed Jordan, there are such places. So, I thought this would be interesting to the Christian Koreans. We would love to see all the Korean people come to Jordan as much as we would like Jordanians to come/see the Koreans and learn from their values and experience. To see how the Koreans are keeping the country clean. Seoul is very clean. Busan as well is very clean.
Q: Would you explain about your background in brief? A: I started my working life earlier in the Jordanian military academy in 1964. I went to different courses course which is required for any officer as he goes along. Until 1999, I retired as a major general from the army, then, I was involved in the peace process. In fact, I was involved even before, when I was in uniform. I was made ambassador to Turkey and to Israel. I was made director of His Majesty's office and I was made director of National Security, and during that time, I was chosen by His Majesty to run for the government. I have done my PhD from Kings College in London and a Master's degree in the United States and my BA in Jordan University. I changed my major along the way. I started as political science and public administration in Jordan but I moved to the masters degree for public administration. For my PhD, I changed completely to strategic studies. On this program, I entered in Kings College, it is multidisciplinary and it is a bit of everything military history, technology, military thinking, economics of war. It focuses on the different instruments of power of any state that they integrate in preparing the nation for war or for peace. When you asked what is my major, this is a bit tricky because I changed along the way.
Q: What is your hobby? A: At that moment, I don't have time, but I enjoy reading all kinds of books. Now, I am forced to read on current issues. But before that, I don't mind history books.¡Ú
