FORMER Slovak Defence Minister Jozef Stank died in a Bratislava hospital on the morning of March 7 at the age of 64 following a serious illness, the TASR news agency reported.
A farewell ceremony to the ex-minister is scheduled for March 14.
Stank left public life following 2004's presidential elections. From the autumn of 2002 until June 2004 he headed the office of former Slovak president Rudolf Schuster.
In January 2001 Stank became defence minister after his colleague from the Party of the Democratic Left, Pavol Kanis, resigned from the post.
Jozef Stank was born on October 26, 1940 in Nitra. In 1986 he became a Communist Party deputy of the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly, then a bicameral parliament.
From November 1989 to May 1990 he was chairman of the Commission for Clarifying the Events of November 17, 1989.
In December 1989 he was appointed as the first vice-chairman of the Federal Republic of Czecho-Slovakia's Federal Assembly, a post he held until the end of December 1992, when the federal assembly dissolved along with the federation.
From 1993 he worked at Slovakia's Foreign Affairs Ministry. From the end of June 1998, after Ivan Mjartan's departure as Slovak Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Stank worked as charge d'affaires at the Slovak Embassy in Prague. From December 3, 1998 to January 2, 2001, Stank was Slovakia's Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
