Local

AMMAN — The second Jordan International Energy Summit (JIES) is scheduled to take place on May 16 and 17 in Amman, according to a statement released Tuesday.

The Energy Ministry will be hosting the event, which “will give context to developments in the domestic sector whilst also appealing to international experts and potential investors”.

JIES 2 will feature government and business leaders who will share their insight into the challenges and opportunities in Jordan and the region, the statement said. Last year’s summit attracted over 300 delegates from the world’s leading energy companies.

AMMAN — Authorities uprooted 420 palm trees in Azraq District, east of the country, during this month after discovering the red palm weevil, a devastating pest of palm trees, a government official said on Tuesday.

The uprooted trees were severely infested, Agriculture Ministry Spokesperson Nimer Haddadin said, adding that they were aged between 5 and 25 years.

“A campaign carried out by the ministry and the National Centre for Agricultural Research and Extension [NCARE] is ongoing to eliminate the pest, which was discovered in Azraq. It is expected that another 700 infested trees will be uprooted,” Haddadin told The Jordan Times.

The red palm weevil is a dangerous pest that kills the tree or sapling it infests, he underscored, adding that it has attacked three farms, which are now categorised as hot spots.

“In addition to fighting the pest in Azraq, the teams are also calling on people to notify the ministry of suspected infested palm trees, whether they are planted at their houses or on the streets,” Haddadin noted.

The ministry is also setting up a centre for combating the pest in Azraq, which is rich with palm tree plantations. The centre will be monitoring palm trees at different growth phases.

“A total of 3,000 dunums are planted with palm trees in Azraq, which is home to approximately 50,000 palm trees,” Haddadin noted.

The campaign to eliminate the red palm weevil will continue for another 40 days, during which the ministry’s teams and NCARE will be inspecting all palm trees in Azraq to treat slightly infected ones and uproot those severely infested.

In addition, the ministry will distribute insect traps and pheromone lures for free.

The insect was first spotted in the country in May 1999, in a palm farm in the Jordan Valley. 

Following the discovery of the pest in Jordan, the ministry banned imports of palm saplings from countries where the red weevil has been discovered.

Palm tree importers must provide the ministry with a certificate guaranteeing that their goods are not diseased before they are authorised to import palm seedlings.

The red palm weevil is native to Southeast Asia, but has been recorded in several countries around the world, according to the University of California’s Centre for Invasive Species Research.

“The international trade in live palms is the most likely conduit that has allowed this pest, probably moved as eggs, larvae, or pupae hidden inside palms, to move vast distances,” the centre’s website said.

The red palm weevil “is widely considered to be the most damaging insect pest of palms in the world”, it added. 

AMMAN — Greece and Jordan see eye to eye on regional issues and share common stances in pushing for peaceful solutions to regional crisis, according to Greek Ambassador Maria Louisa Marinakis, who highlighted the opportunity to increase bilateral cooperation.

Jordan and Greece, which started diplomatic ties in 1947, are two moderate countries in the southeastern Mediterranean region that have been enjoying excellent relations over the years, Marinakis said in an interview on the occasion of her country’s independence day, which the embassy is celebrating on Wednesday.

Greece’s independence day is marked on March 25.

“Jordan is a moderate country that promotes moderate Islam, and [it] should be supported in various areas. We are always your voice in the EU,” Marinakis told The Jordan Times.

The ambassador said trade exchange between the two countries is expected to witness a substantial boost, after the EU recently agreed to simplify the rules of origin for industries in Jordan.

“Greece supported Jordan strongly in this regard and we believe this will greatly benefit your economy.”

Highlighting the high level of exchanges of visits by officials between the two countries to boost ties, she said an official Greek delegation is scheduled to visit Jordan from May 9 to 10 along with representatives of various Greek companies working in renewable energy and construction to explore partnerships and potential cooperation.

Marinakis added that a trilateral meeting of the secretaries general of the foreign ministries of Greece, Cyprus and Jordan focusing on cooperation in energy, culture, trade and regional issues will be held in April in Cyprus.

Referring to the Syrian refugee crisis, which has affected several countries including Jordan and Greece, she said: “Jordan and Greece followed similar stances. In spite of the economic difficulties both countries face, they kept their borders open for the refugees fleeing the war. They dealt with them on the basis of fundamental principles of human rights.”

She said more than 800,000 refugees have crossed into the EU through her country and there are some 50,000 currently in Greece.

On tourism, the ambassador said the number of Jordanians visiting Greece rose by around 27 per cent after Aegean Airlines started operating flights to Jordan in June 2014.

“The price per ticket went down to around JD300 from JD700 previously. This was good news for tourism and for business exchange between the two countries.” 

The Greek diplomat stressed the importance of strategic military and security cooperation, noting that more coordination at a global level is needed to combat terrorism.

Marinakis, who will be concluding her tenure in Amman soon, added: “I am actually home here. The warmth and hospitality I received is something to remember for life.”

“I would like to say that there is an invisible line between [the] Temple of Hercules in Amman and Sounion in Athens, and this every time reminds me of the deep ties between the two countries,” she added.

Cape Sounion is home to the ruins of an ancient Greek temple of Poseidon.

AMMAN — The Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday cried foul as authorities prevented the group from holding its “internal elections”, questioning the government’s intentions for banning the elections planned in April.

A senior official attributed the decision to a motion made by its rival group, the Muslim Brotherhood Society, which comprises defectors from the mother group, which now claims that their organisation is the sole legitimate Brotherhood entity. 

Muath Khawaldeh, the group’s spokesperson, said the move by the government is “unprecedented” in the Kingdom’s political life.

“This is a violation of the law,” Khawaldeh told The Jordan Times.

Amman’s Governor Khaled Abu Zeid, who calls the shots regarding such activities, said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is not registered, thus it is not allowed to conduct elections.”

“Any such gathering should be legal and they should be a legal entity to conduct any gathering,” Abu Zeid told The Jordan Times, adding that there is another society registered with the same name and it is the legal entity.

In response to some MPs’ query about the reasons behind banning the Muslim Brotherhood from holding a meeting to elect its shura council members, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Mohammad Thneibat said the new licensed group has filed a complaint with the governor challenging the legality of the meeting.

The Muslim Brotherhood group was considered “illegal” after the registration of Muslim Brotherhood Society a year ago, an initiative that was led by Abdul Majeed Thneibat, as the legitimate replacement of the older group. 

The original Muslim Brotherhood was licensed in 1946 as a charity affiliated with the mother group in Egypt and was relicensed in 1953 as an Islamic society.  Although the group modified their by-laws two months ago, ending their affiliation to Egypt, they are still considered “illegal” by authorities as they are not registered.

“This decision prompts us to reconsider many issues, including current [internal] negotiations for taking part in the upcoming parliamentary elections,” Khawaldeh said.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Tuesday left the Kingdom for an official working visit to Washington, DC, to take part in the Nuclear Security Summit to be held this week, a Royal Court statement said. 

On the sidelines of the summit, His Majesty is scheduled to meet with several political leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, with whom he will discuss regional and international developments. 

The King has taken part in the three nuclear security summits held in Washington in 2010, Seoul in 2012 and in The Hague in 2014. 

The nuclear summit was initiated by US President Barack Obama who, in a speech delivered in Prague in 2009, described nuclear terrorism as one of the gravest threats to international security and called for joint-international efforts to prevent it.

During the 2012 and 2014 nuclear security summits, the Kingdom presented a Statement of Activity and Cooperation to Counter Nuclear Smuggling, signed by as many as 20 countries. In support of the commitments outlined in that statement, Jordan has over the past two years hosted two multilateral counter-nuclear smuggling workshops.

HRH Prince Feisal was sworn in as Regent. 

AMMAN — The National Petroleum Company and IPG, a UK-based company, signed a production sharing agreement on Tuesday to explore for oil and gas in the eastern parts of the Kingdom.

Under the deal, IPG will work on increasing output from Al Risheh gas field to reach around 50 million cubic feet per day during the first year of the contract. Currently, gas output from Al Risheh gas field is around 12-13 million cubic feet per day.

“This is a very important agreement for Jordan to increase production from Al Risheh gas field and explore for oil and gas in Al Safawi area,” Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Ibrahim Saif said on Tuesday at a press conference to sign the deal.

The four-year agreement can be prolonged for one more year, said the minister.

Egyptian investor and owner of IPG Yehya Al Koumi, whose company was granted concession rights to explore for gas and oil in Al Risheh gas field and Al Safawai area near the borders with Iraq, said the company enjoys international expertise and is home to world-renowned experts in the area.

“We hope that after the four years, we will be able to increase gas output to 300 million cubic feet per day,” said Koumi at the presser.

Under the deal, IPG will spend around $100 million over the next four years, according to Qutaiba Abu Qura, chairman of the National Petroleum Company.

Jordan needs around 400-450 million cubic feet of gas per day, according to Abu Qura.

Early in 2014, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour announced that British Petroleum ended its oil drilling operation in Jordan after unsatisfactory results on its second well in the country. 

Following that, the government floated several tenders to attract companies to explore for oil and gas in Al Risheh gas field and Al Safawi area.

Jordan, which imports about 97 per cent of its energy needs annually, incurred losses worth billions of dinars due to repeated cuts in natural gas supplies from Egypt. 

In mid-2015, Jordan opened a terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG), which enabled the country to import LNG, mainly for electricity generation. 

According to the National Electric Power Company, around 80 per cent of the country’s electricity is generated by gas. 

AMMAN — Around 100 people staged a sit-in in front of the Prime Ministry on Tuesday demanding full rights for the children of Jordanian women who are married to non-Jordanians.

The demonstrators, including women, men and children, stood for three hours waving placards demanding their full rights as Jordanian citizens.

Some of the banners read: “Jordan’s name is in my heart. How do they say I am a foreigner when Jordanian blood runs through my veins,”; “we do not want to attack anyone… we just want our rights that are granted to us by the Constitution”; and “when are you going to look at us equally?”

The majority of the demonstrators complained of their inability to obtain work permits or driving licences, or own property and said the identification documents that were issued by Civil Status and Passports Department (CSPD) are "useless".

The CSPD said on Sunday that the documents, called identification certificates, are required for the issuance of IDs for children of Jordanian women. 

By December 2015, the CSPD had issued 56,000 identification certificates to children of Jordanian women married to foreigners. 

The department said it will start issuing the IDs within the coming few days.

The government had said in the past that the IDs will help these children obtain driving licences and benefit from other government services such as free healthcare and education, as well as being able to obtain work permits, own property and invest in Jordan.

“I went to apply for a driver licence for my son and the employee there told me this [identification certificate] was a useless document not worth the paper it is printed on,” one protester told The Jordan Times.

Samira Amad, the mother of four children who is married to a Palestinian, said all the “privileges that the government announced are ink on paper”.

“Whatever we apply for, we have to obtain a security clearance or visit the General Intelligence Department, and most of the time, our requests are declined without any justifications,” Amad told The Jordan Times.

Sabah Tahawi, who is married to an Egyptian, agreed.

“These promises by the government to ease our lives are all attempts to pacify us, because in reality, nothing is happening in our favour and we are only suffering more,” Tahawi charged.

She expressed fears for her children when she dies.  “Now while we are alive, we cannot give our rights to our children. What will happen to our children when we die?”

Zamam Ahmad, who is married to a Syrian, said her son was denied entry into Jordan when they were returning from Turkey two months ago.

“My 20-year-old son was forced to return to Idlib in Syria awaiting approval to enter Jordan, but he died of a rocket attack before anything could happen. My son was killed because his father is not Jordanian,” Ahmad said.

The demonstrators also complained of having to enrol in the more expensive parallel programmes at public universities, enduring almost double the cost of regular students.

They also said they are unable to donate blood to their loved ones because they do not carry a national number.

“If someone needs blood in my family, I cannot donate for them,” said Abdullah Ahmad with tears in his eyes.

Rasha Darwish said many government employees blamed her for choosing to marry a non-Jordanian.

“Several government employees I had to deal with for official papers told me this was all my fault because I did not marry a Jordanian,” Darwish added.

She expressed anger over these remarks, questioning “how Jordanian men are free to choose four wives from any nationality they please”.

“I believe I am free to choose my husband. Let the government admit to us that we are second class citizens, then we will be quiet and stop making any demands,” Darwish said.

An official at the Prime Ministry who met with the demonstrators told The Jordan Times that their demands will be examined.

“We have met with some of the representatives and received a list of demands. We will issue orders to the concerned public agencies to ease up the procedures,” the official, who preferred anonymity, said.

The rights of Jordanian women's children are of utmost importance to the government, he added.

"We will follow up with the concerned agencies to make sure that the Cabinet decisions regarding their rights are implemented properly."

The government, he said, wants to safeguard the human rights of everyone. 

Rami Wakeel, who organised the event on behalf of “My Mother is Jordanian and her nationality is a right for me” campaign, confirmed meeting with the government official.

“He was very cooperative and promised address the relevant authorities in the coming week to help us and ease the procedures,” Wakeel told The Jordan Times.

If no changes are made on the part of the government agencies, he added, “then we will demonstrate every Tuesday until our demands are met”.

In 2014, the government announced that it was granting children of Jordanian women married to foreigners certain privileges.

The privileges are granted provided that their mothers have been residing in Jordan for a minimum of five years, including 180 days every year, according to the CSPD.

Government officials have said in the past that there are 88,983 Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians and these families have 355,932 children registered with the CSPD.

Women’s rights activists have for years been demanding that Jordanian women be allowed to pass on their citizenship to their children and spouses, a right that only men enjoy.

Individuals and entities who oppose granting citizenship to family members of these women, particularly those with Palestinian husbands, say such a measure will only work to ensure “Israel’s ultimate plan of creating a substitute homeland for Palestinians in Jordan”.

Palestinian refugees after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and those who were living in the West Bank when it was occupied by Israel in 1967 have been given citizenship.  

AMMAN — Work is under way to group organisations working with young people in a national coalition, creating a collective environment that actively serves youths.

The coalition will be initiated by the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD) in cooperation with UNESCO and the support of the EU.

"The global trend for donors and UN agencies now is to support projects of institutions working through a coalition on joint ventures," said Dareen Abu Lail, who is in charge of UNESCO youth programmes in Jordan.

At a press conference on Tuesday to announce the establishment of the coalition, she noted that UNESCO will build the capacity of organisations that are part of the alliance.

The main aim is to "create an enabling environment in which young men and women can develop their competencies, exercise their rights and meaningfully engage their communities as active citizens", according to the organisers.

Official figures show that there are 5,251 youth organisations operating in Jordan.

"The efforts are scattered, and while it is a good thing to have this huge number of institutions working with youths, there is a need to create a body that unites their efforts to better serve youngsters," said Mohammad Omoush, JOHUD deputy director for youth leaders and innovation.

He noted that the coalition will include 60 institutions that represent all 12 governorates.

"The entities will be selected according to their performance and programmes, and they will be announced in June," he added.

The organisations will be reached through JOHUD community development centres that exist across Jordan, while the coalition will include an ad hoc committee consisting of member of NGOs, universities and government institutions.

"The committee will be in charge of organising the work of the coalition," highlighted Omoush.

The alliance is being established under the framework of the EU-funded Networks of Mediterranean Youth Programme.

AMMAN – The government is working to regulate the labour market to absorb Syrian workers without affecting Jordanians working in various sectors, officials said Tuesday.

At a meeting at the Interior Ministry to discuss government procedures regarding Syrian refugees, Interior Minister Salameh Hammad said Syrian refugees will be given three months to rectify their status in accordance with the relevant rules and regulations, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Also speaking at the meeting, Labour Ministry Secretary General Hamadah Abu Nijmeh said the ministry is working on organising the labour market to receive Syrians using certain measures and it will communicate with employers on this issue.

For his part, Planning and International Cooperation Minister Imad Fakhoury stressed the need to set the required framework to regulate the status of the Syrian workforce in Jordan in accordance with the Kingdom's commitments in this regard.

Stressing that Jordan deals with issues related to Syrian refugees in a comprehensive, coordinated manner, Hammad noted that the Kingdom continues to do what it can for the refugees. 

He highlighted the crisis' effect on natural resources, infrastructure, and the health and education sectors, commending the UNHCR's support for the Kingdom in dealing with these repercussions, Petra reported.

UNHCR Representative to Jordan Andrew Harper commended Jordan's efforts to host refugees despite the challenges it faces, stressing the agency's strategic relationship with the Kingdom.

The meeting came to discuss the outcomes of the London donor conference held in February, which included the Jordan Compact. The document lists the commitments of the international community, international financial institutions and multilateral development banks to assisting the Kingdom.

The compact is aimed at turning the challenge of the refugee problem into development gains that would benefit Jordanians and Syrians.

According to the 2015 census, around 1.3 million of the Kingdom's 9.5 million population are Syrians.

AMMAN — The results of Sunday's rainmaking experiment are encouraging, and plans are in place for more experiments in the future, Jordan Meteorological Department (JMD) Director Mohammad Samawi said Tuesday.

Samawi said it will take more time to determine the success of the experiments as more data must be collected, adding that evaluating in real-time is the hardest phase of rainmaking, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

He added that the evaluation of the results will take more than five years to compare the average of rainfall in previous seasons and conduct scientific analyses.

The JMD, which conducted the experiment in cooperation with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, will continue to follow up on the results and publish them on its website and through media outlets, Samawi said.

Sunday's experiment went in parallel with a weather depression that affected the Kingdom, which brought rainfall, he added.

This week's rainmaking experiment took place at that time because Thai experts were in the Kingdom, so the department had them coordinate with meteorological experts in order to select the perfect standards for rainmaking that fit Jordan's climate, Samawi said. 

The experiment was conducted after Jordan and Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding on March 23 to benefit from the East Asian country's experience in rainmaking technology.

After conducting technical studies and consulting with the Thai experts and local partners, an agreement was reached to conduct the experiment at the King Talal Dam's catchment area.  

In remarks to The Jordan Times earlier this week, Samawi noted that certain weather conditions are sought after when carrying out artificial rain experiments.

Such weather conditions include certain levels of humidity and water vapour, among other factors. 

To induce precipitation, the JMD is using two groups of seeding agents depending on whether a cloud is cold or warm, including calcium chloride and compressed carbon dioxide as freezing agents, and a compound of urea and ammonium nitrate for the absorption of moisture.