A KING'S LEGACY; AS JORDAN'S HUSSEIN NEARS DEATH, HIS SON VOWS TO KEEP THE PEACE.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Jordan's government today prepared to declare a gravely ill King Hussein unfit to rule, handing over power to his son, Crown Prince Abdullah, sources said.

The decision was made during a meeting Friday attended by Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh and six former prime ministers, including King Hussein's cousin, Prince Zeid Bin Shaker, said sources at the Prime Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Under the Jordanian Constitution, Tarawneh must request that Parliament give authority to the crown prince, the sources said. An announcement carried by the official Jordanian news agency said Parliament will meet Sunday.

Abdullah, 37, is a career soldier whose lack of political experience has left the country uneasy.

Jordan's next government will remain committed to peace in the Middle East and close relations with Washington but wary of both Iran and Iraq, Abdullah told The New York Times in his first interview since he was designated successor to his father.

``I am an extension of his majesty's outlook and his majesty's beliefs,'' said the brigadier general, in speech that was British in tone but American in rhythm and vernacular.

The interview with several visiting foreign reporters took place Thursday in Raghadan Palace, on an off-the-record basis. But Friday night, as Hussein's death appeared imminent, the prince's aides authorized publication of the wide-ranging conversation, which they said was intended in part to set the record straight on the circumstances of his selection two weeks ago to replace his uncle as crown prince.

In the interview, Abdullah discussed his nuanced views of other regional diplomatic challenges; his strained relationship with his uncle, the former Crown Prince Hassan; and his vision of the future of the Jordanian monarchy.

His greatest immediate internal concern, it seems, is to close family ranks behind him as he prepares to take the throne just weeks after his father unceremoniously deposed Hassan after 34 years as Hussein's designated successor.

Abdullah said he learned of his father's decision just one day before it was announced publicly and the king left Jordan for a second bone-marrow transplant.

He denied published reports that he had flown secretly to Minnesota in the fall to complain to his father about Hassan, who was then crown prince. All the king's 12 children visited him during the six months he spent being treated abroad, Abdullah said, and he had stayed for a few days at the end of September and early October.

Abdullah said he greatly admired his uncle, had frequently turned to him for counsel and was confident that Hassan would play a senior advisory role in the new regime.

``This was an issue between two brothers,'' Abdullah said. Hussein wanted ``to have the legitimacy go back into his line,'' he added.

Yet shortly after the prince returned from his visit to his father at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he gave a rare interview to an Arab-language weekly noting that he had been crown prince himself until he was 3 and that there was nothing to prevent reverting to the traditional line of succession - the first indication to palace-watchers in Amman that such a change was being contemplated.

And in the interview Thursday, Abdullah made it clear that he, too, thought Hassan had recently been too much the acting king and not enough the loyal deputy. ``The role of a crown prince should be to keep a low profile,'' he said.

He was quick to refer to his family's dynasty, saying, ``The Hashemites are the unifying factor of Jordan.

``That is what binds us together, Palestinians and Bedouins and everyone else,'' he said, sitting next to his half brother, the 23-year-old Prince Ali, who was once seen as his father's most likely successor.

The man who will be king of Jordan is a personable career military officer with his father's quick smile and unfeigned modesty. He shares as well his father's deep distrust of Shiite radicalism, unfettered democracy and other perceived threats to the stability of Jordan and the survival of the dynasty.

Yet he is quite unlike Hussein, Abdullah acknowledged, in the circumstances of his ascension to the throne and in his relationships with his peers in the region, whose fathers were in many cases mortal enemies.

Externally, he wants above all to reassure the world that the succession in Amman will not change the foreign policy crafted so carefully by Hussein. Jordan's desire for a permanent peace between ``our friends in Israel and our friends in the PNA,'' the Palestinian National Authority, will remain its chief diplomatic priority, he said.

But when discussing the delicately balanced Jordanian policy toward Iraq, Abdullah seemed somewhat closer to the American position. His father supported Iraq, Jordan's neighbor and major trading partner, when other nations were arrayed against Iraq during the Persian Gulf War and has since been a critic of U.N. sanctions that have caused suffering among the Iraqi people.

Abdullah said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein still poses a threat to Kuwait and that Jordan would support a change in Iraq's regime. He said he agrees with U.S. policy-makers that there is no hope that Saddam will voluntarily change his policies.

``We are on the same sheet of music, so to speak,'' Abdullah said, referring to his discussions on Iraq in Amman last week with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Yet Iran poses a more serious destabilizing threat to the region, he said, warning that the liberalizing forces represented by President Mohammed Khatami remain very much a minority.

Belying his image as a political novice, he spoke knowledgeably of the diverse pressures facing his country and its neighbors, and used candor and charm to challenge the widespread notion that his sudden ascension has strained relations within the royal family.

He also sought to emphasize the practical utility to a future monarch of his army career, which began with eight years in desert bases ``in the middle of nowhere'' but more recently made him the country's chief military envoy. He is comfortable with ordinary Jordanians because he has lived like an ordinary Jordanian soldier, he said. And he has developed a close circle of professional friends in the armies of Israel, the Persian Gulf states and the United States, he said.

Abdullah spoke especially warmly of his friendships in other royal families in the Arab world, and sympathetically of their desires to fight Islamic fundamentalism and retain some of their dynastic privileges.

Many of them shared American educations and an American belief in free-market economics, he noted. ``We went to the same schools,'' said the prince, who attended prep school at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and went on to study at Sandhurst, the elite British military college. ``We ate in the same restaurants. We like the same movies. We have a lot in common, and we have all become very good friends.''

His wife, Princess Rania, is a Palestinian whom he married in 1993, and they have a son, Prince Hussein, and a daughter, Princess Iman.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

PHOTO (1--2--Color) Jordanians keep a vigil at the Amman hospital where King Hussein lies gravely ill.

Rina Castelnuovo/The New York Times

(3--Color) People await news of the king's condition at the hospital where he is being treated after an unsuccessful bone-marrow transplant.

Enric Marti/Associated Press

(4--Color) ABDULLAH