Word: hamzah
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Succession plots are brewing inside Jordan's Hashemite dynasty. Reversing a deathbed wish of the late King Hussein, King Abdullah II stunned his subjects last week by summoning Crown Prince Hamzah - his half brother - from a holiday and abruptly sacking him as heir to the throne. "It was a complete surprise," said Mustafa Hamarneh, a prominent Jordanian political analyst...
...Hamzah, eldest son of the late King Hussein and American-born Queen Noor, nearly succeeded Hussein in 1999 when the monarch, dying of cancer, dismissed his brother, longtime Crown Prince Hassan. So close was Hamzah to his father that even Abdullah, then a 36-year-old military officer, assumed that his younger half brother, then 18, would get the royal nod. But roughly two weeks before his death, Hussein opted for Abdullah's maturity and experience - but made it clear that he should in turn make Hamzah his crown prince and "critical partner." Abdullah acceded, but never truly accepted Hamzah...
...Part of the problem, of course, is that Muslim parties make up a small but critical part of her government. Indeed, her own Vice President, Hamzah Haz, is a longtime defender of radical Islamic groups. Late in October he told reporters that he planned to visit Ba'asyir in prison out of a feeling of "Muslim brotherhood." (Hamzah changed his mind at the last minute, sending a staff member in his place.) As for Ba'asyir, police held off from questioning him for two weeks while he was treated for respiratory problems. Still, resting in a police hospital in Jakarta...
...islands would test the mettle of any government, let alone a democracy as young and fractious as Indonesia's. Since the start of her tenure last year Megawati has shied away from trying to snuff out the extremist threat, in part to placate religious conservatives like Vice President Hamzah Haz, Megawati's likely opponent in the 2004 presidential race, who has long supported radical groups and has denied that there are any terrorists in Indonesia...
...another case of your regular, pushy presidential spouse playing gatekeeper, but of a consummate networker aggressively meddling in matters with national ramifications. To many Indonesians, the flamboyant 58-year-old Taufik is now simply the most powerful man in the country. "If Megawati is Number One and Vice President Hamzah Haz Number Two," says Alvin Lie, an M.P. for the opposition National Mandate Party, "then Taufik is One-and-a-Half...