Ricardo Alarcón, who was once Cuba’s leading diplomat, the third most powerful Cuban Communist after Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, and his country’s most prominent conciliator with the United States, died on Saturday in Havana. He was 84.
His death was announced by the Cuban Foreign Ministry. No cause was specified.
From 1966 to 1978, and again from 1990 to 1991, Mr. Alarcón was Cuba’s representative to the United Nations. He served a term as vice president of the General Assembly and for two months was president of the Security Council.
He was appointed foreign minister in 1992 and from 1993 to 2013 was president of Cuba’s National Assembly, a legislative body that typically complied with President Castro’s agenda.
Fluent in English and known for his white guayabera shirts and Cohiba cigars, Mr. Alarcón became a familiar figure in the negotiations that ended an uncontrollable exodus of thousands of Cuban refugees to Florida on flimsy rafts when the Clinton administration agreed in 1994 to issue 20,000 visas annually to Cuban immigrants.
