Jiri Dienstbier, a former minister of then Czechoslovakia who attained some fame in 1989 by symbolically cutting holes in the fence that cut his country off from the West, has died, reported Czech media Saturday, according to dpa. He was 73. Dienstbier was a former foreign minister of the country, which has since broken up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As the Soviet Union began to lose control of its Eastern European satellites in 1989, Dienstbier, a former dissident who took power after the Communist regime collapsed in his country, was involved in several public ceremonies to cut the border between his country with Germany and Austria. Czech media reported that Dienstbier died after a long disease.
