HAVANA -- (AP) -- Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, Cuba's foreign minister for more than 15 years and a founder of the nation's Communist Party, has died at age 70, state news media reported Monday.

 Malmierca died Saturday, according to an article in Granma, the Communist Party daily newspaper he helped found and direct in the years after the Cuban revolution in 1959.

 Granma did not specify the cause of death, but sources who knew Malmierca said he had been hospitalized in Havana for several weeks with lung cancer.

 After the 1959 change of government, Malmierca helped organize the new regime's state security structure, along with its Communist Party and daily newspaper.

 From the late 1970s until 1992, Malmierca was Cuba's foreign minister, directing international policy during the island's deployment of troops in Angola and the exodus of Cubans who fled to the United States by sea.

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