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Ex-Swiss President Schlumpf dies

July 8, 2012 - 18:13 By Korea Herald
Leon Schlumpf
GENEVA (AP) ― The Swiss government says former President Leon Schlumpf, the father of the country’s current head of state, has died.

The government said the 87-year-old died in a hospital in the northeastern city of Chur on Saturday. No cause of death was specified.

Schlumpf, the father of Swiss President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, was minister in the federal government from 1980 to 1987 and served as head of state in 1984.

The government said Schlumpf will be remembered by the Swiss people as a head of state, minister and devoted politician who always put “people and mutual trust’’ at the center of his activities.

His daughter has been a minister of the federal government since 2008 and assumed Switzerland’s rotating presidency this year.