Carmi Gillon, security chief of the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said the assassin of Rabin should have been killed by Rabin's bodyguards at the moment he opened fire, local newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth reported on Sunday.

The 73-year-old Rabin was shot dead by Yigal Amir, a member of a Jewish extremist organization, in Tel Aviv at the end of a peace rally on Nov. 4, 1995, after Rabin signed interim peace accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"Yigal Amir is smiling because he knew he won. The fact that he is alive - that is a security failure ... the result of an operational breakdown that bodyguards didn't shoot him," Gillon was quoted as saying.

Gillon, who at the time of Rabin's assassination was head of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, also said, "If the bodyguards had killed Amir on the spot, he wouldn't have become a symbol for the radical right wing."

"Amir could add fuel to the fire for the next political murder, " he warned.

Gillon also said it was "worrisome" that the right wing's political struggle now focuses on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over the Israeli Gaza pullout.

Yedioth Aharonoth also published a survey in Sunday's issue, which showed that 20 percent of the surveyed said Amir deserved a pardon.

Meanwhile, Amir's family have started a new campaign for his release by setting up a Website on his behalf and appearing in television interviews. They also compared the assassination to " killing a criminal" and called for the prosecution of Israeli leaders who backed the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

Source: Xinhua