UR TV CAST

The following day the general gave three interviews to Arab papers over the phone, since when he has fallen silent.King Hussein could close Iraq’s last window on the world by sealing the border This would cut Baghdad’s last lifeline. He does not want to look like a Jordanian cat’s-paw and would like to become a focus of opposition to Saddam Hussein.King Hussein praised General Kamel extravagantly last week during a television broadcast, in which he denounced President Saddam for the first time. Egypt is openly furious at being pushed to one side by King Hussein in deciding the future of Iraq.Hussein Kamel may prove a dangerous guest in Jordan His ambition is to get Saudi Arabian backing. Saudi Arabia worries about the ambitions of the Hashemite dynasty – King Hussein’s family – to return to power in Iraq, which it ruled until the last king was killed in 1958.Syria fears a pro-American regime allied to Jordan taking over in Baghdad.

He also wants to avoid rousing the hostility of Iraq or those in Jordan who still sympathise with the Iraqi leader.Jordan denies that it is simply changing sides, but it may not look that way from Baghdad. On the Iraqi side of the border, the security on the road to Amman has been taken over in part by Fedayeen Saddam, the private militia of Uday, the son of President Saddam.The presence of General Hussein Kamel in Amman makes Jordan for the first time central to the opposition to Iraq, but this attracts the suspicion of Jordan’s neighbours. He wants to conciliate the US, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, with whom he has been at odds since the Gulf war, by helping remove President Saddam from power and replacing him with a regime sympathetic to the Gulf war allies. It crystallised on 8 August when General Hussein Kamel Hassan, President Saddam’s son-in-law, fled to Amman.King Hussein is involved in a delicate and possibly dangerous manoeuvre. The king’s belief that the fall of the Iraqi leader is imminent has been growing since April when Baghdad rejected a plan, which Jordan had backed, for the sale of Iraqi oil under UN supervision.

PATRICK COCKBURN

Amman
“King Hussein thinks Saddam Hussein will go within the next nine months,” says a Jordanian political specialist. So it is less surprising than it might at first appear that Mr Turner is said by friends to be “enthusiastic” about Mr Levin’s proposed deal and that he may be getting his clocking-in card from Time Warner before the week is done.. Meanwhile the Disney-ABC effect may mean that his baby may never be more valuable that it is today. Cash flow into the Atlanta headquarters is expected to reach $570m this year, up from $441m last year. Meanwhile, if Levin does not capture Turner, an attractive catch by any standards, who else might try? General Electric, perhaps, or Mr Murdoch?Luckily for Mr Turner, all this is happening at a time when his company is performing extraordinarily well. If it could ingest Turner, Time Warner would be helping to protect itself from possible hostile bids.

Moreover, Levin is proposing financing the takeover with new shares, not new debt.Aficionados of Hollywood may also be gratified to learn that a merger, if it happens, would reunite the old Warner Brothers movie library, which was split when Mr Turner purchased the rights in 1985 to all Warner films made before 1948.But then there is the game itself, the central theme of the soap: who gobbles who and when? While this has never been far from the minds of the industry’s leaders, it became desperately urgent when Disney made its lunge for ABC. For Time Warner it would serve to tilt the balance of its interests back from distribution towards content, something which Wall Street has long demanded. As with the Disney-ABC deal, it promises to combine the vast production capabilities of both companies – with their movie and television studios – with multiple distribution potential through TNT, TBS and Warner’s HBO as well as through Time Warner’s extensive cable system holdings. Making a new purchase for an estimated sum of more than $8bn might at first seem eccentric.But while it remained unclear last night whether Levin’s bid would succeed, analysts pointed to several areas of logic in such a merger.

Since Levin took over the company after the death of its former charismatic chief, Steven Ross, he has been battling to reduce its debt – still stuck at $15bn – and overcome the scepticism about his abilities on Wall Street. Thus you will achieve the size you so crave, but by another route.Few could have predicted such a move, because even from the perspective of Time Warner it at first seems unwise. He was reportedly picked up at the airport by Ms Fonda herself. The pitch was simple: if you are unable to buy a network, allow yourself to become part of our empire.