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AMMAN — An army source said Monday that Border Guards received 74 Syrian refugees during the previous 24 hours.

Border Guards transferred the refugees to shelters and camps, and Royal Medical Services cadres treated the injured, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

AMMAN — HRH Prince Ali on Monday met with Sheikh Hazza Bin Zayed Al Nahyan — vice president of the executive council of Abu Dhabi and honorary president of the Emirati Football Association — and discussed issues of interest to regional and international football.

Prince Ali reviewed upcoming events awaiting the game and means to develop the sport in the Arab world, expressing his appreciation for the Emirati Football Association in this regard, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Sheikh Hazza highlighted the key role of football in building the character of young Arabs and enhancing communication among different peoples, which requires presenting further support to the game.

AMMAN — The Jordan Green Building Council (Jordan GBC) announced on Monday that it has become the Kingdom’s “first solid waste management centre of excellence”.

The centre, which is being supported by USAID, will sustain ongoing efforts aimed at developing a cadre of solid waste management professionals, who will in turn serve as advocates for the sector, according to a Jordan GBC statement.

“The consumption styles of citizens and companies must be changed because landfills have reached their maximum capacity,” said Jordan GBC Chairman Abdullah Bdeir. The statement quoted Wissam Rabadi, chief of party of the USAID Jordan Competitiveness Programme, as saying that “Jordan recycles less than 5 per cent of its solid waste”.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah, the Supreme Commander of the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army (JAF), visited the Public Security Department (PSD) headquarters on Monday. 

The King was briefed by PSD Director Maj. Gen. Atef Saudi on issues of interest to the department and the services it presents to citizens. 

His Majesty praised the efforts exerted by the PSD, JAF and other security institutions, and their personnel's sacrifices to protect the country, according to a Royal Court statement. 

Saudi reviewed the PSD's executive plan and procedures to develop its security services and combat crime. 

King Abdullah was also briefed on modern technology used within police work and the equipment available at the PSD's command and control centre, the statement added.

AMMAN — The US has finalised a law that will allow the administration to increase military support to Jordan to $450 million this year, officials announced Sunday.

Later in the day, His Majesty King Abdullah met in Aqaba with US Secretary of State John Kerry and stressed the importance for the international community, especially the US, to exert more efforts in the Palestinian issue. 

The King urged the international community to end the stalemate in the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians until reaching progress according to the two-state solution and relevant international legitimacy resolutions, a Royal Court statement said.

The meeting also addressed regional and international efforts in the war against terror groups in line with a comprehensive approach.

His Majesty and Kerry reviewed the latest developments in the Syrian crisis and stressed the significance of building on the outcomes of the recent Munich security summit, especially those related to working on supporting endeavours to reach a truce in Syria, the statement added.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh attended the meeting.

Defence assistance

Judeh announced at a press conference with Kerry earlier in Amman that a US-Jordan defence support law has been signed by US President Barack Obama to enhance the Kingdom’s military capacity.

Commenting on this law, Kerry said Jordan will receive $450 million in foreign military financing this year, making it the third-largest recipient of such aid worldwide. “That support will continue,” he stressed.

In 2015, the US provided Jordan with $385 million in foreign military financing support to Jordan, which is an $85 million increase over 2014, defence reports said.

The law, according to a version available online on US government websites, stipulates that the US will help the Kingdom in its response to the Syrian refugee crisis; to provide necessary assistance to alleviate the domestic burden to provide basic needs for the assimilated Syrian refugees; to cooperate with Jordan to combat the terrorist threat of Daesh or other terrorist organisations; and to help secure the border between Jordan and its neighbours Syria and Iraq. 

Kerry noted that this year Congress approved an unprecedented $1.2 billion in assistance to support the partnership with Jordan together with additional counterterrorism support funds, according to Kerry, who noted that the Kingdom will receive $1.6 billion in assistance to enhance border security, create economic wealth and create jobs for Jordanian people. 

The minister also spoke about international efforts to fight Daesh and Jordan’s role in this regard.

“Today the [international] coalition has launched 10,000 air strikes; we are providing increased amounts of equipment and training to our local partners in Iraq and Syria,” Kerry said, adding that Jordan is a global leader in combating terror.

Royal Jordanian airforce pilots regularly “fly missions as part of operations and His Majesty King Abdullah has called on the international community to disrupt Daesh’s recruiting and “we are doing exactly that, and the coalition is planning further action even as we speak”.

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) on Sunday sentenced three men to the death penalty for murdering two police officers and a gendarme lieutenant in two separate cases in Irbid and Maan. 

The shooting in Irbid took place earlier in December 2015, involving five men who shot and killed Captain Jamal Darawsheh and Corporal Usama Jarawreh near the Samma intersection to the west of Irbid while in their patrol vehicle.

One of the defendants was the brother of a man from the village who was killed in a police shootout in October last year, when police were trying to arrest him for alleged vandalism of an Islamic cemetery. 

The second defendant was given life in prison for orchestrating the attack and transporting the weapon, while the third defendant received 15 years in prison for providing the weapon while knowing it was going to be used against police officers, a judicial source told The Jordan Times. 

Meanwhile in the Maan case, the SSC sentenced two men to death and a third suspect to life in prison, for murdering Second Lieutenant Nart Nafesh in Maan in August 2014.

The SSC charge sheet said four of the five defendants in the case sought to avenge the death of a relative during the unrest in the governorate and decided to target any police officer in the city. 

In the same case, the court sentenced a third suspect to life in prison, declared a fourth not guilty for lack of evidence and referred a minor to a juvenile court, a judicial source told The Jordan Times. 

AMMAN — US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday announced reaching a “provisional agreement” to cease fire in Syria, following a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov on Sunday morning.

The announcement came during a joint press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Judeh in Amman, where Kerry added that he spoke with Lavrov to discuss terms of ceasefire without further elaboration on these terms.

However, he noted that he hopes that US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin would talk soon and after that the implementation would begin.

“I believe we have reached a provisional agreement in principle on the terms of the cessation of hostilities that could begin in the coming days,” Kerry announced.

He explained that the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) last week took a very important and tangible step forward in this regard.

“We established a task force for the cessation of hostilities” under the auspices of the UN and co-chaired by the US and Russia.

“Over the past days, our teams in Geneva have been working intensively to develop modalities for the cessation of hostilities,” the secretary of state said, adding that “there will be consultations with other members of the ISSG and the Syrian opposition on the provisional understanding that has been reached”.

Syria without Assad

Meanwhile, the visiting minister stressed that nothing will do more to make the fight against Daesh effective than to put in place a political transition, that finds a government in Syria responsive to the desperate needs of the Syrian people.

That is a government, he stressed, that cannot have Bashar Assad as its head and “that is why we have said again and again that with Assad, this war cannot and will not end”.

The path to be, he noted, is the path to isolating, degrading and destroying Daesh, “giving the people of Syria a real choice to their future is actually right in front of us now”.

“Now we have this moment of opportunity, and the US is doing everything in our power to try to fulfil this moment of opportunity… today the coalition has also engaged very directly in fighting against Daesh, and we are determined that we will win this fight,” he stressed.

Humanitarian assistance to Syria

The state secretary also noted that there was an agreement at the Munich meeting to accelerate and expand access to humanitarian supplies inside Syria, “and I can tell you that today the process is starting to work”.

Earlier this week, limited humanitarian aid entered besieged suburbs in Damascus for the first time in quite a while and 114 trucks in recent days have reached five areas that were under the siege. 

For the ISSG’s humanitarian task force more areas will now receive help in the coming days and weeks. “This access, specifically called for in UN resolution 2254; we intend to see this aid continues to flow.”

The Syrian regime has a fundamental humanitarian and global responsibility and so the other parties to the conflict, Kerry said, adding that facilitating humanitarian access to populations in desperate need now or in any time “is a fundamental responsibility”.

He said the use of food as an instrument and weapon of war is “a war crime, and we put the regime on notice today that we will watch closely for the full compliance with this international objective” that has been ratified within the UN Security Council by unanimous vote.

“I have been involved in the discussions around this war for three-and-a-half years now and I have talked to every party in one way or another, and I can tell you that no tactic such as those being employed today will win this war, they will only create more refugees, more victims”.

This prolonged conflict will strengthen Daesh, and it will compel tens of thousands of more Syrians to flee the conflict and will increase the problem of displaced persons and refugees,” he concluded.

AMMAN — The Lower House on Sunday started a marathon debate over the 2015 draft elections law, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The House lowered the age for voting eligibility to 18 years, provided that the would-be voter turns that age 90 days before the date of the poll.

Meanwhile, the MPs deferred discussion over an article that bans members of the army and security agencies from voting, pending a clarification from the government regarding civilians employed by these institutions on a contract basis.

The version at hand also guarantees the right of a voter who lives out of his/her native district to be reregistered in the original district after applying in writing to the Independent Elections Commission within 14 days of the publication of the tentative voter lists.  

The session, which split into morning and afternoon meetings, was headed by Lower House Speaker Atef Tarawneh and attended by Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour.

The law, based on its mandating reasons, aims at enhancing political reform and enabling political powers to form blocs or election gatherings to elect a Lower House that represents the society's spectra. 

The premier described the bill as “progressive and democratic” and a key component part of the reform process led by His Majesty King Abdullah on all fronts. 

Ensour noted that the government is working on issuing a smart election card that is "highly credible" and almost impossible to forge, noting that the card has all the electoral data related to its holder. 

AMMAN — Jordan’s total exports during 2015 amounted to around JD5.558 billion, recording a 6.6 per cent drop from 2014, the Department of Statistics (DoS) announced Sunday.

National exports were 7.1 per cent lower at around JD4.795 billion in total in 2015 compared to 2014, whereas re-exports were worth JD0.763 billion last year, recording a 3.4 per cent decline from the previous year.

The statistics also showed a 11.3 per cent fall in imports during 2015, down to JD14.436 billion.

Consequently, the trade balance registered a JD8.877 billion deficit, bringing the gap down by 14 per cent during 2015, compared to the year before. 

Exports of garments, potash and phosphate went up by 7.8, 2.5 and 10.9 per cent respectively, while the export value of fruit and vegetables, pharmaceuticals and fertilisers dropped by 4.7, 5.9 and 26.4 per cent in 2015.

Imports that registered an increase in their values during 2015 compared to 2014 included machinery (6.5 per cent); vehicles, motorbikes and their spare parts (15.4 per cent); electric devices (25.4 per cent); and jewellery and precious minerals (38.4 per cent), DoS data revealed. 

Imports of crude oil and its derivatives declined by 41.2 per cent, and imports of iron and its products also dropped by 8.8 per cent during 2015, compared to the previous year. 

AMMAN — One man died and 39 people were injured on Sunday in two separate accidents in Irbid and on the Dead Sea-Adasiyeh Road.

In Irbid, a collision involving two public transport buses and a private vehicle on Irbid-Kuforyouba Road injured 28 people.

Irbid Civil Defence Department (CDD) Director Brig. Gen. Munib Awawdeh supervised transferring the injured to nearby hospitals, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The injured were listed in fair condition, except for one who was reported to be in critical condition, Awawdeh noted.

The accident resulted in the closure of the street for some time, and created a traffic jam involving hundreds of cars, before traffic police officers headed to the location and organised traffic movement to help move the damaged vehicles, Petra added.

On the Dead Sea-Adasiyeh Road, a man died and 11 were injured in a collision between a truck and a bus, according to a CDD statement.

The truck driver lost control and hit the bus which was parking on the side of the road, according to the CDD.

CDD cadres administered first aid to the injured and took them to Southern Shuneh Hospital where they were listed in fair condition.