Early that day, while driving from the Addis Ababa airport to the city, President Mubarak of Egypt was the target of an assassination attempt. The perpetrators came from Sudan. Mubarak was on his way to participate in the annual conference of the Organization of African Unity. Later that day Prime Minister Rabin phoned President Mubarak to express Israel's delight that he was not harmed. Mr. Rabin reminded Mubarak, as he reminded his Knesset faction, that one of the major threats to Middle Eastern stability was Islamic fundamentalism, or in his words - Khomeinism. Text:
Prime Minister Rabin today, Monday, 26.6.95, spoke by telephone with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak following the attempt on the President's life. The Prime Minister told him that everyone in Israel was happy that he escaped the attempted assassination without injury. It is time, Rabin said, that the terror which threatens the stability and tranquillity of our region was cut down.
President Mubarak thanked the Prime Minister warmly and told him that six bullets had hit his protected car, which he brought with him to Ethiopia from Egypt and that his bodyguards assaulted the terrorists, killing three of them.
Prime Minister Rabin sent President Mubarak his best wishes.
At a Knesset Labor Party Faction meeting, the Prime Minister said that extremist Islamic elements are those who are threatening the stability and quiet of the entire world and specifically the region. These are the elements who want to destroy the peace process and to impose Khomeinism on the world, Rabin emphasized.
There are those among us who live as in the past and not in the present and future and do not understand who threatens our peace and the peace of the Free World, Rabin explained. The problem is that these groups are run by Iran and not by Arafat or Assad, he added and only yesterday, we witnessed another suicide terrorist attack in Gush Katif.
The Prime Minister expressed his satisfaction that the Palestinian Authority had arrested Islamic Fundamentalist activists in the Gaza Strip yesterday.