Both have felt free to send their assassination squads into the streets of Amman

Both have felt free to send their assassination squads into the streets of Amman.Washington is pressuring Jordan to turn itself into a base for action against Iraq, a policy wildly unpopular among ordinary Jordanians.There is a much bigger question mark over the future of Jordanian policy than expected a month ago. But the king was also the man who crushed the Palestinians in Jordan in a bloody civil war in 1970 and three years later he secretly flew to Israel to tell a disbelieving Israeli premier that Egypt and Syria were about to launch a war. He played both ends against the middle because he believed Jordan's weakness - 4.4 million people and no natural resources or defences - left him no choice. In 1991 he won overwhelming popular support by maintaining a friendly neutrality towards Iraq during the Gulf war. In 1967 he joined Egypt and Syria to fight Israel only to lose the West Bank. The king needed to keep in with the great powers, but preserve his nationalist credentials.

An early act of the young Harrow and Sandhurst-educated monarch was to fire his British military adviser "Glubb Pasha". King Hussein's political career was spent playing his enemies off against each other It was not easy. IT WAS always a balancing act. Jordan is a buffer state between more powerful countries, notably Israel and Iraq. But last month he appointed Abdullah, his oldest son, as his heir Once again the future of Jordan is in the balance.. His brother, Crown Prince Hassan, was appointed in 1965, when the king was a target for assassination. The next year he broke with Iraq, receiving Hussein Kamel, the defecting son-in-law of Saddam Hussein.Married four times and the father of 11 children, there was always a potential problem over his succession.

Some 350,000 Palestinians expelled from the Gulf were forced to return home. The US was chary of its former ally.Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in Oslo in 1993 promised further isolation The King reacted quickly He signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. At one moment he was allied to Syria, but allowed Jordan to be used as a base to overthrow its government in 1978.He paid paid a heavy price for his stance in the Gulf war He was ostracised by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Three years later he flew to Israel to warn its disbelieving prime minister that Egypt and Syria were about to attack.He worked with the CIA and the US covertly and overtly, but this did not stop him opposing the US-led war against Iraq in 1990. In the aftermath, Jordan became the base for Palestinian guerrillas and the target of Israeli attack.Supported by Israel and the US, the King moved against them during the so-called Black September, as the army fought the Palestinians in a savage civil war. King Abdullah had seized the West Bank in 1948 and paid for it with his life The Palestinians resented Jordanian rule. In 1957 he just survived an attempt to topple him by nationalists by appealing to the military as the country tottered towards civil war.