Former Soviet leader Gorbachev aide Zagladin dies at 79

     Vadim Zagladin, a former aide to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died November 17 in Moscow at age 79 after a long illness.
     Vadim Zagladin was born in Moscow June 23, 1927. A graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he worked as a consultant and then as a deputy and the first deputy of the head of the international department with the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party between 1964 and 1988.
     From 1988 to 1991 he was an aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last president of the Soviet Union.
     An author of many books on international relations, he worked from 1992 as an aide to the president of the Gorbachev Foundation, as well as a deputy chairman of an international association for European-Atlantic cooperation.
     A source at the Gorbachev Foundation said Vadim Zagladin had been seriously ill recently and could hardly walk, but that he continued to work from home.
     Zagladin will be buried Tuesday, November 21.

RIA Novosti, 20.11.2006