Gorbachev’s peace plan for Saddam over Kuwait

Moscow wanted to link the Israel-Palestine conflict to a peace deal with Saddam Hussein to secure Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait in 1990.

The then Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to persuade his American counterpart, George Bush senior, of his ambitious peace plan, according to the secret transcript of a meeting between them at a summit in Helsinki in September 1990.

Gorbachev told Bush: “You’ve mentioned that Saddam Hussein wanted to put all the problems in one pile, to link the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestine, Lebanon. It is so, and he scores on it. It is necessary to face the fact that the problem of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is sensitive. Therefore, we find it necessary to knock this card out of his hands, and play it in our common interest. You probably thought of it, too.”