08/02/2010 (Agence Europe) Professor Krzysztof Skubiszewski, the first Polish foreign minister following the fall of communism and eminent statesman on the political scene of his country, died on Monday 8 January in a Warsaw hospital. As minister of foreign affairs (1989-1993), he proved a craftsman in constructing diplomatic relations between a democratic Poland and the EU and NATO. He was also behind Poland's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and finalised negotiations for the withdrawal of Red Army troops from Polish soil. Together with his German counterpart at the time, Hans Dietrich Genscher, he initiated a political union linking Warsaw, Berlin and Paris (the Weimar triangle). In 1994 he joined the Court of Arbitration in The Hague, where he presided over the Court of Arbitration between Iran and the United States. He was born in Poznan on 8 October 1926. (A.By./transl.fl)