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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Former Israeli President Dies

Compiled From Wire Services

Chaim Herzog, Israel’s outspoken, sometimes controversial president from 1983 to 1993, died on Thursday at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv. He was 78 and lived in Herzlya Pituach, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The cause was heart failure after he contracted pneumonia on a recent visit to the United States, said Rachel Sofer, spokesman for the hospital.

Herzog, a former general, was his country’s chief delegate to the United Nations from 1975 to 1978 after serving as its director of military intelligence and, in 1967, as the first military governor of the occupied West Bank. Over the years, he was also a businessman, a lawyer, an author and a Labor Party member of the Israeli Parliament.

In his two five-year terms as Israel’s sixth chief of state, he strove to enlarge the president’s role, which in Israel is largely ceremonial, by making public declarations on issues that leaders in government would not, or could not, address.