Shevardnadze dies at 86

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."