Guido di Tella, 70; Argentine Official Helped Mend U.K. Ties
Guido di Tella, 70, the Argentine foreign minister who helped mend relations with Britain after the 1982 Falkland Islands war, died Monday in a Buenos Aires hospital after suffering a stroke at his country home.
Di Tella, also a former ambassador to the United States, was foreign minister under then-President Carlos Menem in the 1990s, when Argentina and Britain reconciled after the war over the Falklands, a British possession off the Argentine coast.
Di Tella’s diplomacy was credited for the emotional 1998 visit that Menem paid to Britain, the first by an Argentine leader after the war. The 75-day Falklands war ended when the British drove Argentine forces off the wind-swept archipelago in a decisive victory that left 750 Argentine and 220 British troops dead.
Di Tella studied industrial engineering and received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the 1970s, he began an association with Argentina’s Peronist Party, the country’s preeminent political force, and steadily rose through the ranks.
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