New York — Cyrus Vance, who resigned as President Carter's secretary of state over an ill-fated attempt to save American hostages from Iran, died Saturday. He was 84.
Vance died at Mt. Sinai Medical Center after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, said his son, CyrusVance Jr. He said he did not know the cause of death.
Heading the State Department was the highlight of Vance's career, but his duties on behalf of presidents, the Congress and the United Nations spanned more than three decades. He used his peacemaking skills to ease conflicts in foreign lands, racially torn American cities and even corporate boardrooms.
"A champion for peace and human rights, he was a superb statesman, who served me and other presidents well," Carter said in a statement from himself and his wife, Rosalynn. "We will miss his friendship, and the world will miss his humanitarian work and goodness."
Quiet and self-effacing, Vance was a study in contrasts with Henry Kissinger, his flamboyant predecessor at the State Department. Vance's politics were far more liberal than Kissinger's, and his political leanings often put him at odds with Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Vance enjoyed several successes during his early period as secretary of state but suffered setbacks later on. He played a key role in normalizing relations with China, winning approval for new Panama Canal treaties and helping negotiate a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
But Vance's tenure also saw an expansion of Soviet influence in a number of areas as well as the collapse of the pro-American monarchy in Iran and the seizure of American hostages in Tehran.
When Carter approved a military operation for the rescue of the hostages in April 1980, Vance resigned because he felt he could not support such a plan. His skepticism proved prescient; the operation ended in disaster.
Eight servicemen died when a Marine Corps helicopter crashed into a plane parked at a clandestine refueling site in Iran. The 52 hostages became an issue in the 1980 presidential campaign and were held for 444 days before their release on Ronald Reagan's inauguration day.
Vance Jr. said his father acted on his own principles, whether the presidents he served agreed with him.
"My father believed if he held true to his principles the chips would fall where they may," he said.
One of Vance's most difficult diplomatic undertakings took place long after he left the State Department, when U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar asked him in 1991 to try to end the fratricidal war in the former Yugoslavia. He helped achieve a cease-fire in Croatia but peace eluded him in Bosnia.
His strategy in Bosnia was the subject of considerable controversy. Vance felt strongly that negotiations were the only way to halt Serbian advances, rejecting critics who argued that his tactics amounted to appeasement of an aggressor.
He quit in despair after struggling with the Bosnian conflict for almost a year.
It wasn't long before he plunged into an entirely different kind of peacemaking: resolving rival creditor claims involving a debt-ridden commercial real estate firm with extensive holdings in New York City. Vance helped the parties reach a settlement in July 1993.
Vance retired several years later.
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