President Bush is scheduled to meet at the White House today with the Hashemite King, Abdullah of Jordan, to discuss, the White House says, “developments in Iraq and issues concerning Middle East peace.”

With respect to “developments in Iraq,” the Jordanian role has been typically two-faced. On one hand, the Jordanians have been bad-mouthing the best hope for freedom and democracy in Iraq, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, over sham legal charges dating back more than a decade. The attempt to snare Mr. Chalabi with a criminal prosecution before a military tribunal in Jordan was one of the least appreciated, most scandalous aspects of the long struggle over Iraq.

On the other hand, the Jordanian leaders have been signaling a willingness to negotiate and let bygones be bygones. Jordan’s state prosecutor, Mahmoud Obeidat, was quoted in the Economist in October saying of Mr. Chalabi, if he’s a head of state, “it won’t be us imprisoning him, it will be he who will imprison us.”

Jordan was benefiting handily from cross-border smuggling from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a flow of funds, goods, and oil that Iraqi democrats certainly have within their power to restrict now that Saddam is gone. The best message that Mr. Bush could give the Jordanian king today is to stop harassing Mr. Chalabi with hoary and politically motivated charges and to start trying to help him in building a peaceful, free, and democratic Iraq. But to do that Mr. Bush is going to have to go up against a faction within the American bureaucracy that has been invested for years in the Hashemite enterprise. The visit of the king at the White House today will be an important test of whether the Hashemites will be a useful partner in the region.