Hanns Neuerbourg | Roving AP reporter, 88

Hanns Neuerbourg, 88, a roving Associated Press correspondent in Eastern Europe who also covered the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and interviewed Elvis Presley and other celebrities, died Saturday of lung cancer at a hospital near Stein, Switzerland.

Robert H. Reid, AP's news director for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Mr. Neuerbourg was a standout. "Hanns was an incredible journalist, a man with eclectic tastes, an amazing grounding in languages, and a lively intellectual curiosity," Reid said.

Mr. Neuerbourg covered the 1967 war between Israel and Arab forces in the Middle East, and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. He was briefly bureau chief in Cairo, Egypt, and spent time in Rome covering the pope.

As Geneva bureau chief, he covered disarmament and a range of other issues. He also interviewed personalities such as violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin, pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and Presley while he was in the U.S. Army in Germany in the 1950s.

After Mr. Neuerbourg retired, he went to work for Switzerland's Neue Zuercher Zeitung and continued writing for the AP until several months ago.

He began working in journalism for the Neue Zeitung, the Allied occupation military newspaper in Germany after World War II, and was hired by the AP in 1948 because of his scoops, including a forecast of the Berlin airlift.

- AP