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Saddam accepted UAE exile plan to avert
Iraq war-TV
29.10.2005
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DUBAI, Oct 28
(Reuters) - Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had
secretly accepted a last-minute plan to go into
exile to avert the 2003 Iraq war, but Arab leaders
shot the proposal down, Al Arabiya television
reported on Friday.
UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan
made the proposal for Saddam to go into exile at an
emergency Arab summit just weeks before the U.S.-led
war began in March 2003.
But the 22-member Arab League, led by
Secretary-General Amr Moussa, refused to consider
the initiative. "We had got the final agreement from
the different parties, the main players in the world
and the person concerned - Saddam Hussein - within
24 hours," Mohammed bin Zayed, deputy head of the
UAE armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi, told
the UAE-based channel in a documentary. |
Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP
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"So we were coming to put facts on the table, and
there would have been results had it been
discussed," he said.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak says in the
documentary that the United States had signalled its
support for the proposal.
The documentary says the Iraqi delegation at the
summit in Egypt had been unaware of Saddam's "secret
consent" to the plan, which Iraqi Foreign Minister
Naji Sabri dismissed as "silly".
It was not clear why Arab opposition alone scuppered
the arrangements, which Al Arabiya said would have
seen Saddam go into UAE exile with a promise of
protection from legal action.
Saddam and seven other senior figures under his rule
this month went on trial in Baghdad for crimes
against humanity over the killing of 148 Shi'ite men
from the town of Dujail.
The United States led a coalition to topple Saddam,
saying he was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
None were ever found. The war, an ongoing insurgency
against occupying troups and the U.S.-backed
authorities, and an explosion of crime amid the
post-war disorder has cost thousands of lives.
Reuters
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