Jordan's king allows Hamas leader to attend his father's funeral

Amman - King Abdullah II on Friday issued instructions to allow the politburo chief of the Palestinian Hamas group, Khalid Mashaal, to enter Jordan to attend the funeral of his father who passed away in Amman Friday, the official Petra news agency said. The agency quoted an official source as saying that the monarch's gesture was made for "purely humanitarian reasons and does not carry any political connotations".



Mashaal, who is based in Damascus, was deported from Jordan to Qatar in 1999 along with other senior Hamas officials after the Jordanian authorities decided to close down the radical group's offices in Amman.


















The Jordanian government officially recognizes the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas as the representative of the Palestinian people, and does not accord recognition to the Hamas group which is in control of the Gaza Strip.


Former head of Jordan's General Intelligence Department General Mohammad Dahabi held a series of talks with Hamas officials in Amman last year in what local reports described as an attempt to establish even-handed ties with the feuding Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah, but the effort appeared to have faltered after Dahabi's resignation in January