Eduard Shevardnadze, who helped end the Cold War as the Soviet Union's last foreign minister before becoming president of Georgia, died on Monday at the age of 86 He was a controversial figure praised for his role in negotiating a bloodless end to the Soviet Union's confrontation with the West, but despised at home for his 10 years at the helm of post-Soviet Georgia that saw him ousted in a popular uprising.
"Mr Shevardnadze died today at noon," his aide Marina Davitashvili told AFP, weeping. "He was ill for a long time." Shevardnadze won high praise on the world stage for his time as Mikhail Gorbachev's chief diplomat, when he oversaw arms-reduction treaties with the United States and brokered the deal that brought down the Berlin Wall. Speaking on Russian radio, the former Soviet leader recalled Shevardnadze as "Georgia's ideal representative."
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