Andrei A. Gromyko Dies; Ex-Soviet Envoy, President

Longtime foreign minister and former president Andrei A. Gromyko has died at age 79, Tass reported today.

The official news agency did not give a cause of death, but a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday that Gromyko was suffering from a vascular problem.

Gromyko, whose career survived Kremlin purges and five leadership changes, was a glib spokesman for Soviet foreign policy and a stone-faced negotiator with Western leaders from Winston Churchill to Jimmy Carter.

His tenure as foreign minister extended 26 years, lasting until July, 1985, when he became the Soviet Union’s president, a ceremonial post but one that honored his past.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who succeeded Gromyko as president on Oct. 1, announced the statesman’s death to the Supreme Soviet, the new legislature. The deputies stood to honor Gromyko’s memory, Tass reported.

In addition to being replaced as president, Gromyko also was retired from the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo last fall.

In April, he was retired from the policy-making Central Committee along with dozens of other senior officials, to make way for new blood in the leadership.

Under Gorbachev, the Communist Party chief, the post of president became more powerful.

Gromyko died Sunday, Tass reported without giving details.

In confirming rumors that Gromyko was in poor health, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Gremitskikh had said last week Gromyko was hospitalized for “a vascular pathology phenomenon which demanded surgical intervention.”

Before becoming foreign minister in 1957, Gromyko had served as ambassador to the United States, the United Nations and Britain.

As a diplomat, ambassador and foreign minister, he helped forge the Soviet-American World War II alliance, joined in drafting the United Nations Charter and sat in on superpower talks that shaped the face of the modern world.

He also was the man who taught Americans and others what the Russian word “nyet” meant during his years as the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations.

His long tenure as foreign minister--under five Kremlin leaders--attested to the competence that enabled him to survive the political upheavals in the Soviet Union. In negotiations, he knew when to take a hard stance, when to bully and when to compromise--with unrelenting patience.

A more detailed obituary on Andrei A. Gromyko will appear in Tuesday’s editions of The Times.