ISRAEL: It was a hugely audacious assassination plan that might have spared the world the past decade of Saddam Hussein's rule, and the US and its allies the massive operation to oust his regime, capture him and rehabilitate his country.
Yet it might also have set the Middle East ablaze.
Israel yesterday confirmed for the first time that it planned to kill Saddam 11 years ago by dispatching commandos to northern Iraq to fire sophisticated short-range missiles at the Iraqi president as he attended his father-in-law's funeral at a cemetery near his hometown of Tikrit.
The plan was aborted only shortly before its execution because of an accident at one of the final dress rehearsals, held at an army base in Israel's southern Negev desert on November 5th, 1992, in which five soldiers died.
Some details of the plot to kill Saddam have been published over the years, but the full story only emerged yesterday when the Israeli military censor sanctioned its publication following the capture of Saddam.
Previously, Israeli officials have even attempted to claim that the intended target for the hit was the Hizbullah guerrilla leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli chief-of-staff, Mr Moshe Ya'alon, argued yesterday that it was "irresponsible" to have published the details even now, insisting that some things "should remain internal for security reasons, and shouldn't be revealed to the whole world".
As confirmed yesterday by the former general and government minister Mr Ephraim Sneh, the plan to kill Saddam was approved in principle by the late Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister in 1992, although it was not given a final green light.
Preparations were overseen by Ehud Barak, who was the army chief-of-staff at the time, and would later be prime minister.
"Like [Israel's 1976 hostage rescue] in Entebbe and other daring operations," said Mr Sneh, "it was Rabin who took this decision."
Among the key factors that motivated the Israelis were the desire for revenge against Saddam who, unprovoked, had fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.
Israel was also concerned that its deterrent capability had been badly weakened because, at the express request of the Americans, it did not retaliate for those Scud strikes.
Finally, Israel was also worried that, post-war, Saddam was again seeking weapons of mass destruction that might threaten the Jewish state, and was sponsoring terrorist groups. Opponents, including senior generals, however, criticised the plan, and warned that it could trigger a non-conventional war against Israel.
The dress-rehearsal, at the "Tse'elim" training base, was attended by Gen Barak and many of the army's most senior officers. At a stage when a dummy missile was to have been fired at a group of soldiers "playing" Saddam and his entourage, a live missile was fired. Five soldiers were killed and the soldier "playing" Saddam was badly injured in the legs. The planned strike was called off.
