Al Qaeda blamed for Jordan blasts

BERLIN - Suicide bombs that shattered three Jordanian hotels today look like the work of al Qaeda and militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, security analysts say.

At least 57 people died in the attacks in the capital Amman.

The pro-Western, moderate Arab state presents a hugely appealing target for al Qaeda, which is committed to bringing down such governments across the Middle East.

It has efficient and well-regarded intelligence services, boasts close security ties with the United States, hosts one of the largest US embassies in the region and occupies a strategic position next door to Iraq, where Washington is battling an insurgency whose most prominent leader is Zarqawi.

"The Jordanians have allowed the Americans to use their country as a staging post in the global war on terrorism," said David Claridge of London-based consulting group Janusian Security Risk Management, which maintains an office in Jordan.

"There's a very strong suspicion this is to do with Iraq ... The balance of probability is it's very likely to have been Zarqawi."

Claridge said Jordan had in recent days announced its intention to send an ambassador to Iraq. Al Qaeda has targeted foreign diplomats in Iraq and set out to prevent Arab countries from sending envoys.

Jordan is also a tempting target for al Qaeda in its own right, as a relatively open, secular society aspiring to be a modern, pro-Western business hub -- the antithesis of the fundamentalist Islamist society cherished by Osama bin Laden.

Danny Yatom, former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, told Channel One television there: "Jordan is a focus point for radical Islamic terrorism ... groups whose over-riding aim is to hit at anything that smells of Westernism. This is true regarding Muslim regimes considered moderate, such as in Jordan and Egypt."

Sebestyen Gorka, a security analyst based in Hungary but familiar with Jordan, said: "It is clear Jordan is right up there amongst the most attractive targets for al Qaeda."

He agreed that Zarqawi, himself a Jordanian, would immediately enter the frame as a chief suspect.

Zarqawi was identified as the brains behind a major al Qaeda bomb plot intercepted by Jordanian authorities in April 2004, which they said would have targeted the prime minister's office, the intelligence headquarters and the US embassy, releasing deadly chemicals across Amman.

The accused ringleader was shown confessing on television and saying he had taken orders from Zarqawi.

The security analysts noted Zarqawi had been dedicated since the start of his militant career in the early 1990s to overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy and establishing an Islamist state in his native country.

His militant group, Bayt al-Imam, was smashed by Jordanian security forces and he was jailed for 15 years in 1996, but then freed under an amnesty when King Abdullah assumed the throne three years later.

"This clearly would be something very personal to him -- not just ideological, but a grudge match," Gorka said.

Hotels have been a popular soft target for Islamist militant groups in the past few years, from Indonesia to Kenya and Egypt. Claridge said that while Amman hotels have barriers to prevent car bombings, they do not as a rule have a highly visible security presence.

A US counterterrorism official in Washington said one of the three hotels, the Radisson, was targeted for attack as part of a thwarted millennium plot in which al Qaeda planned assaults on several sites at the start of 2000.

"Al Qaeda and those guys like to go back to places they've missed or where they weren't so successful the first time around," the official said.

The official said Zarqawi's long history of militant activity against Jordan provided circumstantial evidence of a possible role. He noted a Jordanian court has convicted Zarqawi in absentia and sentenced him to death for the 2002 shooting of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.

- REUTERS