Liberia's first post-war president dies

Former Liberian president Gyude Bryant, who led a peacetime government after two ruinous back-to-back civil wars, died aged 65, the government said in a statement.
Bryant who died yesterday was sworn in as the "chairman" of a transitional government and served for more than two years as part of a peace agreement to end the conflicts which ran from 1989 to 2003, leaving 250,000 people dead and the economy in tatters.
"According to the special aide of Chairman Bryant he complained that he could not breathe properly. He was rushed to (Monrovia's) JFK Hospital where he died a few hours later," the statement said yesterday.

Bryant's inauguration came two months after the flight into exile of disgraced president Charles Taylor, who was at the centre of the two wars.
A successful entrepreneur and politician, Bryant helped set up the Liberia Action Party (LAP) and was seen as an independent player in Liberian politics.
The soft-spoken but forthright Bryant led a 21-member government divided up under the August peace pact among Taylor loyalists, rebels, the political opposition and civic groups.

Bryant graduated from Liberia's prestigious Cuttington University College with a degree in economics and was hired in 1972 by the Mesurado Group of Companies, then Liberia's largest private conglomerate, as fleet manager of a fishing company.

In 1973, he joined the National Port Authority as head of planning and development.
Anxious to branch out on his own, Bryant founded the Liberia Machinery and Supply Company in 1977, distributing mining and port handling equipment.
His involvement in civic and political affairs began in the 1970s.
In 1984, when the then military junta lifted a ban on political activity, he joined a number of other prominent political and business leaders to found the LAP.