King expected to announce son as heir

Jordan's King Hussein informed his brother Crown Prince Hassan on Friday evening that he will not succeed to the throne. The king is expected to name one of his five sons as his heir, perhaps in an address to his people today. Prince Hamzah (19), the king's fourth son, is the favourite in the succession stakes. The eldest son of US-born Queen Noor al-Hussein ("Light of Hussein"), Hamzah has been "groomed from birth for the job", an informed source told The Irish Times. "He has had private tutors, speaks excellent Arabic, has been trained in tribal traditions and is attending Sandhurst" in his father's footsteps.

Another informant close to the palace said Hamzah's youth favours him. "He is unknown", untainted by miscalculation and corruption. "The king wants the son most like him, that is Hamzah." King Hussein, who reached the throne at 17, seeks to "re-create himself and his own experience of growing up on the job." The king also sees in Hamzah the very qualities which enabled him to rule for 46 years and become a respected figure on the world scene.

The only alternative to Hamzah is Prince Abdullah (37), the king's first-born son of his British wife, Mona. Abdullah, a major-general in the army, is in charge of the special forces which protect the royal family. But he is not popular outside the military. Rumour has it that Abdullah will be named armed forces commander and his younger brother, Prince Faisal, head of the air force.

Prince Ali, son of the king's Palestinian wife, will be passed over, while Hamzah's younger brother, Prince Hashem, is not a contender. Crown Prince Hassan, the king's younger brother, who has served as his "reserve" since 1965, may assume tutelage over the future monarch. Hassan, an Oxford-educated intellectual, does not have Hussein's charisma.

Although the king has been pronounced cured of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by doctors at the Mayo Clinic in the US, Jordan's stability depends on a smooth succession which, observers say, will be achieved through unity of purpose within the Hashemite family.

Hussein is an absolute monarch. He lays down policy, names the prime minister, approves cabinet and administrative appointments and selects senators for the upper house of parliament. He experimented, all too briefly, with democratisation in the late 1980s. But mistrustful of democracy, he has, over the past few years, halted the devolution of power and curbed the press.

The king has integrated into his kingdom more than half a million bitter and antagonistic Palestinians driven from their homes when Israel was established in 1948. Then in 1967 the Palestinian West Bank, ruled from Amman since 1949-50, was also occupied by Israel and a second wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees flooded into Jordan.

Today the Palestinians, who comprise more than half the four million population, are settled but maintain strong connections with their former homeland, binding Jordan to the Palestinian self-rule enclaves. King Hussein, whose realm is founded on Jordan's tribes, army and middle class, has tried to create a balance between "Jordanian Jordanians" and Palestinians, so that the two quite different communities coexist harmoniously.