Former Secretary Of State Lawrence Eagleburger Dies

Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the only career foreign service officer to rise to the position of secretary of state, died Saturday. He was 80.

Eagleburger died in Charlottesville, Va., after a short illness, according to a family friend, Christy Reap. No further details were immediately available.

Tributes poured in immediately, from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to two of his one-time bosses, former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. "As good as they come" was Baker's description.

A straightforward diplomat whose exuberant style masked a hard-driving commitment to solving tangled foreign policy problems, Eagleburger held the top post at the State Department for five months when Baker resigned in the summer of 1992 to help Bush in an unsuccessful bid for re-election.

As Baker's deputy, Eagleburger he had taken on a variety of difficult assignments, including running the department bureaucracy. Baker often was abroad, working on Middle East problems, German reunification and collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving Eagleburger to tend to the home front.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136952565/former-secretary-of-state-lawrence-eagleburger-dies?ft=1&f=1003

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