Secret documents reveal how Muammar Gaddafi unsuccessfully tried to persuade Moscow to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
The revelation is contained in a transcript of a conversation in 1986 between Mikhail Gorbachev, then Soviet president, and Abdul Halim Khaddam, Syria’s vice-president at the time.
Gorbachev is quoted as telling him: “Yesterday, I talked to [Abdel Salam Jalloud, then Gaddafi’s deputy and foreign minister]. He expressed himself in extremist terms, stating that Libya considers it necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
“I told him that someone may not like Gaddafi, Assad [Syria’s then president, the late Hafez Assad], or Gorbachev. What would happen then?”
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