A NEAR MISS, THIS TIME

The team of assassins launched the attack with professional precision. At 8:15 last Monday morning, in a rented house overlooking Addis Ababa's main airport, one of them peered through an opening in the black cloth that covered the window. With binoculars he watched Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi shake hands with his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, welcoming him to a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity. As Mubarak's motorcade pulled out of the airport and onto the tree-lined boulevard leading into the Ethiopian capital, the lookout flashed a signal by radio to the hit squad sitting in three vehicles parked along a small side street. The cars, led by a silver Volvo sedan, began to roll slowly toward the intersection. Then, as Mubarak's four-car motorcade came into sight, one pulled out onto the boulevard and blocked it.

Mubarak's armored limousine, third in the convoy, was about 70 m away when two or three gunmen sprang into the street and opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles. They killed two policemen on duty along the boulevard and then blazed away at the approaching cars. Bullets thumped repeatedly into the presidential limousine but did not penetrate it. As Mubarak's driver screeched to a halt and started turning around, two Ethiopian and several Egyptian security men opened fire with rifles and pistols, downing two of the attackers. The others sped away.

Though it was a near miss, Mubarak was safe again. He had survived an actual attack this time; plots to kill him in 1992 and '93 were broken up before the conspirators could take action. This was close enough to make Egyptians wonder what would happen if killers one day succeeded. They are likely to keep trying, for Mubarak is a strong ally of the U.S. and a key strategist in the effort to establish peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That objective is anathema to many Islamic groups.

After flying directly back to Cairo, Mubarak plunged into a series of public appearances to prove he was unhurt. The attack was "nothing," he said. The car was armored, and "I was cool all the time." As it turned out, he may not have been as secure as he thought. Ethiopian police later found the vehicles abandoned by the assassins who got away. The two sedans and a four-wheel-drive vehicle contained an assortment of weapons, including a trunkful of explosives and two rocket-propelled grenades that could have destroyed Mubarak's limousine if they had been used. Quick and accurate fire from the security men may have cut the attack short and saved the Egyptian President's life.

At a rally in Cairo to celebrate his safe return, Mubarak charged that the assassination attempt was sponsored by extremist Muslims in neighboring Sudan, where Lieut. General Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is President but Islamic cleric Hassan al-Turabi is considered the power behind the government. The attack, said Mubarak, was organized by either "the Sudanese government, and I think that is unlikely, or by Turabi and his group." Mubarak has often accused the Sudanese of supporting the bloody three-year insurgency by radical Egyptian Muslims who are trying to overthrow the secular government.