Argentina's post-dictatorship leader Raul Alfonsin dies

Argentina's ex-President Raul Alfonsin, who led the country on its long-awaited return to democracy after the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship, has died from cancer at the age of 82, his doctor said.

The doctor, Alberto Sadler, said the former leader had lung cancer that spread to his bones. He then developed pneumonia last weekend before he died on Tuesday.

The mustachioed Alfonsin, who became a symbol of Argentina's transition to democracy, was elected in October 1983 following the collapse of the military regime in the wake of the Falklands War of April 1982.

When news of his death was confirmed, hundreds of supporters gathered in front of Alfonsin's family home where they lit candles and sang the national anthem.

"The figure (of Alfonsin) is inextricably linked to the restoration of democracy after a very tragic dictatorship," Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said in London, where she is to participate in the Group of 20 summit of developing and industrialised nations today.

"He was a strict man who defended his beliefs and that is something very valuable," said President Kirchner, who will not be in Buenos Aires for the wake and burial of the Social Democratic leader.

Her Administration has ordered three days of national mourning for Mr Alfonsin.

Mr Alfonsin's centre-left government steered Argentina through an economic depression that saw inflation hit 400 per cent in 1983. He slowly and cautiously dismantled the military's political power structure and created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons to record human rights abuses that took place under the previous military leadership, which had ruled the country with an iron grip.

The commission was led by novelist Ernesto Sabato, and painstakingly documented 8,960 abduction-presumed murder cases.

Its findings were lower than the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo's estimate that 30,000 Argentines were killed by the military for being leftists or suspected leftists, being friends or family of leftists, or at times for no known reason at all.

Former Chilean president Patricio Aylwin, who like Alfonsin was the first leader to restore democracy in his country after a bloody military dictatorship, recalled the "enormous social spirit" of the late president.

During Mr Alfonsin's Presidential tenure, the two leaders collaborated closely in their respective nations "and strengthened our friendship and our commitment to fight for freedom and democracy in our countries," said Mr Aylwin, 90. It fell upon Mr Alfonsin to steer Argentina through the painful challenges of addressing the country's past travails, how its people could find reconciliation and how it could get its house and economy in order under democratic rule.

Annulling the blanket amnesty his predecessor Reynaldo Bignone granted those guilty of human rights abuses in the past regime, Mr Alfonsin sponsored the Trial of the Juntas that culminated in December 1985 with life sentences for former president Jorge Videla and former Navy chief Emilio Massera.