The link between peace and stability on the one hand, and social and economic growth on the other, is dialectic. Peace, poverty, and backwardness cannot mix in one region.

Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development more than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized man.

I have said this in the past and I will continue to repeat it as long as I live: Whoever tries to hurt our national unity is my enemy until the day of judgement.

It is my firm belief that I have a link with the past and a responsibility to the future. I cannot give up. I cannot despair. There's a whole future, generations to come. I have to keep trying.

Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.

It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind.

Let me say this loud and clear. There is a world of difference between terrorist acts and the Islamic Shari'a. Islam is not only a religion, but a way of life. And at its heart lie the sacred principles of tolerance and dialogue.