King Abdullah of Jordan is blunt in his assessment of the current state of affairs in the Middle East and is not optimistic about prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestninians: Concerning reports that US President Barack Obama had his own peace plan in the works, Abdullah said that it was up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to do more of the groundwork. "If we stay at the status quo, others in the region are not sitting idly by. So the chance of conflict is always very high. War would be disastrous for the Israelis, for the Arabs, for all of us," he said.Abdullah warned that despite the good intentions of many, there was a "very good chance" that war could break out in the region in the coming months. "If we hit the summer and there's no active process, there's a very good chance for conflict - and nobody wins when it comes to that," he said.Asked about the direction in which Netanyahu is taking Israel, Abdullah replied that he'd become...(Read Full Post)