Polish FM due in Jordan on first visit to Middle East

AMMAN — Poland Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski is due to arrive in Amman on Tuesday on a two-day visit, during which he will meet with Jordanian officials, according to the Polish embassy.

The Kingdom will be the first country in the re-gion that Waszczykowski has visited since he took office in mid-November.

“My decision to visit Jordan as the first coun-try in the Middle East has not been acciden-tal,” Waszczykowski said in a statement sent to The Jordan Times, add-ing that his visit aims at “emphasising the impor-tance of your country to Poland and the whole EU as a valuable political, economic and military partner”.

The minister added that Jordan remains one of the most stable coun-tries in the Middle East. “We do appreciate Jor-danians’ input in fight-ing the so-called Islamic State [Daesh]. The Jorda-nian authorities’ efforts [in] stopping the extrem-ists are praiseworthy and fully supported by Polish authorities,” Waszc-zykowski said.

“We also highly ap-preciate the long lasting activity of Jordan to de- escalate tensions and re-store Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to restart the Middle East peace proc-ess,” he said, adding that Jordan is a very impor-tant regional actor.

“We appreciate espe-cially the personal activ-ity of His Majesty King Abdullah as guardian of Islamic holy sites in Jeru-salem in this field.” Polish companies have been active in the region since the 1950s, which led to the establishment of the Polish Commer-cial Counsellor’s Office in Amman in 1963, the statement said.

The office became the Polish embassy in Febru-ary 1964. Poland has “long been” one of the main importers of Jordanian phosphate and potassium, the state-ment added. Jordan is “a special place” in the Middle East which has become a safe haven for those fleeing the Syrian crisis, accord-ing to the statement.

“We value this clear sign of solidarity with the vulnerable. We also know that it represents a tremendous economic, fi-nancial but also political and social burden for the country,” Waszczykowski added.

“That is why I believe that international as-sistance is necessary. And that... [is] one of the main goals of my visit to Jordan during which I’m going to open two aid projects financed by the Polish government at a primary school in Ram-tha and a clinic in Ma-fraq,” the minister added.

The projects, he said. target underprivileged Jordanians and Syrian refugees. Poland has implement-ed humanitarian projects in Jordan through Cari-tas Poland and its partner Caritas Jordan since the start of the refugee crisis. Activities aim at the in-tegration and education of children from refugee families and the local community, as well as the creation of job opportu-nities for young people.

The total value of Poland- supported humanitar-ian projects in Jordan is 333,849 euros, the state-ment said. Moreover, since 2012 the Polish foreign min-istry has been making regular contributions in response to the Syr-ian crisis to internation-al humanitarian relief agencies.

The total amount of donations made in 2012- 2015 reached almost 3.8 million euros, including 2.1 million euros contrib-uted only this year. Poland has also been actively granting develop-ment aid to Jordan since 2007, the statement said, adding that priority areas of support in the King-dom for the year 2016 are health and food, educa-tion, and social care.

Poland’s trade ex-change with Jordan has grown fourfold over the last seven years. In 2014 it reached $76.7 million and only in the first nine months of 2015 it in-creased by almost 40 per cent, the statement add-ed, highlighting logistics, food and food processing, and aircraft and defence as viable sectors for fur-ther cooperation.