As George Bush prepared to launch a ground war, Mikhail Gorbachev made one last attempt to broker peace between Iraq and the allies. Once again he dispatched his personal adviser, Yevgeni Primakov, to Baghdad, and then agreed to see Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Moscow. The Kremlin desperately tried to persuade Saddam that he must comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions or face the terrible consequences of a ground battle. Here is Primakov's account of those last, tense days.
I had been to Baghdad twice since October to see Saddam, but this time it was much more difficult to...