Dom Mintoff | Malta leader, 96

Dom Mintoff, 96, a fiery postwar socialist leader of Malta who closed NATO bases, evicted British interests, courted China and Libya and even banned the Times of London to chart an independent course for his tiny Mediterranean island nation, died Monday.

Mintoff was secretive, unpredictable and, to enemies, a ruthless tyrant. But to admirers, he was the father of modern Malta, a charismatic Labor Party fixture for 35 years who was prime minister from 1955 to 1958, when Malta had limited self-rule as a British colony, and from 1971 to 1984, when his vision of a nonaligned, self-sufficient republic was substantially realized.

Mintoff, an architect and civil engineer, helped rebuild Malta after devastating bombing by Axis powers in World War II. He rose to prominence as a socialist legislator in the late 1940s and led his party to power in 1955, battling against the conservative Nationalist Party and feuding with its allies in the Roman Catholic Church.

By 1984, when he resigned, one of Europe's longest-serving heads of government, Mintoff had eliminated foreign military bases in Malta and signed pacts for economic cooperation with the United States and China.

In 1947 he married Moyra de Vere Bentinck, a Briton. They had two daughters, Anne and Yana. His wife preferred to live in England with their daughters, and the couple lived apart for many years.

- The New York Times