NEW YORK CITY, February 7. /TASS/. US former Secretary of State George Shultz has died at the age of 100 in California, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University said on Sunday.

Shultz, an American government official, economist, and business executive, was a member of the presidential cabinets of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He was US Secretary of State in 1982-1989, US Secretary of Labor in 1969-1970, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1972-1974, and director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1970-1972.

"Shultz was a key player, alongside [US 40th] President Ronald Reagan, in changing the direction of history by using the tools of diplomacy to bring the Cold War to an end," the Hoover Institution said. "George Pratt Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, had a distinguished career in government, in academia, and in the world of business. He is one of only two Americans to have held four different federal cabinet posts - State, Treasury, Labor, and Office of Management and Budget. He taught at three of this country’s great universities, and for eight years was president of a major engineering and construction company."

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev congratulated Shultz on his 100th birthday in December 2020 and lauded his contribution to the end of arms race. He stressed that the US politician had been a staunch proponent of the idea of nuclear weapon-free world.

In June 2010, Shultz met with the then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who delivered a speech at Stanford University.