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Of: TT
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Photo: Pawel Flato / TT
Flavio Cotti as Swiss Foreign Minister 1996. Stock Photography
Former Swiss President Flavio Cotti died at the age of 81. According to media reports, he died in the coronavirus suites.
Flavio Cotti, who also served as the country’s foreign minister and interior minister, died in a Locarno hospital after suffering complications from the coronavirus, local media reported in the canton of Ticino, in southern Switzerland.
“It is with great sadness that I learned of the death of Flavio Cotti,” the current Swiss Foreign Minister, the liberal Ignazio Cassis, wrote on Twitter.
“His political spirit will always be present in the Foreign Ministry,” he continues.
Cotti, born in 1939, belonged to the Christian Democratic People’s Party and was Swiss Minister of the Interior between 1987 and 1993. In the meantime, 1991, he held the presidency for a year, as Switzerland has a system in which ministers take turns to hold the presidency one year at a time.
Between 1994 and 1999, Cotti was secretary of state and served as president in 1998.
Cotti wanted to increase Switzerland’s international collaborations and bring the country closer to international organizations. For example, he lobbied for Switzerland to become a member of the UN, which came true in 2002, three years after Cotti resigned as foreign minister.
He also worked to keep the European headquarters of the UN in Geneva and ensured that the Swiss city also became the headquarters of the World Trade Organization, which was founded in 1995.
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