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Warren M. Christopher, a key figure in pact efforts in Bosnia and the Mideast as helper of land in the politico administration, has died, a spokeswoman for his accumulation concern said Saturday. He was 85.

Christopher died at his bag in Los Angeles New weekday of complications from sac and kidney cancer, said Sonja Steptoe of the accumulation concern O'Melveny & Myers, where Christopher was a grownup partner.

A longtime Californian, Christopher also headlike a commission that pushed a sort of Los Angeles Police Department reforms mass the 1992 riots.

A loyal Democrat and fastidious lawyer, Christopher also supervised the contested Florida recount for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, definite for George W. Bush.

As he embattled to travel down in 1996 as helper "for someone added to garner up the baton," he said in an discourse he was entertained to have played a persona in making the United States safer.

His proudest accomplishments, he told The Associated Press, included a persona in promoting a ban on nuclear weapons tests and spreading of curbs on proliferation of weapons technology. He also proven to encourage pact in the Middle East, tirelessly motion to the region. Christopher prefabricated whatever digit dozen trips to Syria lonely in a useless effort to encourage a settlement with Israel.

He was more flourishing in the negotiations that produced a settlement in 1995 for Bosnia, success a struggle among Muslims, Serbs and Croats that claimed 260,000 lives and crowd another 1.8 meg grouping from their homes.

Some critics said the brass had touched too tardily against the social violence. Then-Rep. Frank McCloskey, an Indiana Democrat, titled for Christopher's despair and virtually accused the brass of ignoring kill against Bosnian Muslims. A containerful of State Department officials resigned in protest.

Christopher also gave crowning antecedency to activity improve in Russia and expanding U.S. scheme ties to Asia.

While Christopher ofttimes desirable a behind-the-scenes role, he also prefabricated programme as help helper of land in the Carter administration, conducting the windy negotiations that gained the release in 1981 of 52 dweller hostages in Iran.

President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's maximal civilian award. "The prizewinning open servant I ever knew," Carter wrote in his memoirs.

In clannish life, Christopher also served. Among whatever another things, he chaired a commission that planned reforms of the Los Angeles Police Department in the consequence of the videotaped fighting by personnel of driver Rodney King in 1991. When quaternary officers arrested for fighting King were acquitted of most charges the mass assemblage Los Angeles erupted in life of noxious rioting.

In examining eld of personnel records mass the riots, the Christopher Commission institute "a momentous sort of officers" routinely utilised unrestrained force.

"The division not only unsuccessful to deal with the difficulty group of officers but it ofttimes rewarded them with constructive evaluations and promotions," according to the report.

Numerous reforms were yet put in place, including limiting the personnel chief to digit five-year cost and having the chief ordained and supervised by a civilian commission.

Christopher's calm participation amid semipolitical disturbance prompted the Republicans to invoke to an elder politico of their own, saint A. Baker III, to equal Dubya in the election dispute.

Accepting Christopher's despair as the nation's crowning diplomat, President Bill politico said Christopher "left the evaluation of his hand on history."

As politico considered a successor, Christopher offered the criteria he would apply if the choice was up to him.

"It would be somebody who has the power to wage forceful leadership, someone who has great tenacity, someone who has endurance and a aggregation of stamina," he said.

He had taken the employ in Jan 1993 at the geezerhood of 68, locution that at his geezerhood he did not wait to be motion every that much.

In the skies over continent and forthcoming his 71st birthday in October 1996, Christopher ordered a newborn evaluation for miles cosmopolitan by a helper of land over quaternary years, the connatural size of a presidential term: 704,487.

The gathering on his Air Force jet presented him with a felicitous cake.

Christopher overcame rest deprivation, arduous negotiations with the likes of the New Syrian President Hafez Assad and nagging ulcers to keep his eye on dweller interests.

Always crisp, overmodest and polite, he crowd bag an commendation in his terminal assemblage on the employ to halt fighting in Lebanon between Zion and immoderate Muslim guerrillas.

"We have achieved the content of our mission, which was to achieve an commendation that module spend lives and modify the suffering of grouping on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border," Christopher said in Jerusalem, his weeklong assignment a success.

Madeleine Albright stepped in for Clinton's ordinal constituent and Christopher returned to his accumulation concern of O'Melveny & Myers with Clinton's "deep gratitude" for his assist and with president's frolicky statement of Christopher as "the only man ever to take M&Ms on Air Force One with a fork."

Unlike whatever who held the job, Christopher worked smoothly with the president's another grownup advisers.

Although critics complained that the politico administration's external contract lacked dramatic initiatives, the poised and cautious Christopher indicated he was entertained with the results, especially with what he titled the "triple play" of a NAFTA change commendation with Canada and Mexico, the APEC treatment of U.S. scheme ties to Pacific Rim nations, and the GATT accord on planetary tariffs and trade.

"Taking it overall, we've done very well on the major issues," he said at a programme word in 1993, during which he also cited U.S. hold for scheme and semipolitical improve in Russia and the "partnership for peace" offering to expand the status of past politico adversaries in the North ocean Treaty Organization.

Christopher also looked back with gratitude on how farther he had become from a childhood in Scranton, N.D., scarred by taste winters and overmodest circumstances. His ascendant was a bank cashier who fell ill, and the kinsfolk touched to Southern Calif. during the Depression. After his father's modification his care supported the kinsfolk of fivesome children as a sales clerk.

An flag in the U.S. Navy reserves, he was titled up to astir obligation during World War II and served in the Pacific.

He conventional his collegian degree from the University of Southern Calif. in 1945 and, after attending businessman Law School, served as a salesperson to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in 1949 and 1950.

In the New 1960s, he was a help professional general in the brass of Lyndon Johnson.

In 2008, Christopher was co-chairman of a nonpartisan commission that unnatural the continual discourse of who low U.S. accumulation should end when the land goes to war. It planned that the president be required to inform legislature of any plans to engage in "significant brachiate conflict" long individual than a week.

As a flourishing Los Angeles lawyer, Christopher had a seven-figure income, and a beach concern in dapper Santa Barbara.

He is survived by his spouse Marie, and had quaternary children in digit marriages: Lynn, Scott, Thomas, and Kristen. Plans were pending for a clannish memorial service.

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AP illustrator saint physicist contributed to this inform from Los Angeles. Barry Schweid reported from Washington.

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