P213 CEEFA( 213 Mon 10 Nov 21:14/49 1/3 ] Former Soviet foreign minister Mr Viaschjslav Molotov has died aged 96 after a long illness. Mr Molotov was prime minister and foreign minister under Josef Stalin, and a veteran of the revolution that overthrew the Star in 1917. As foreign minister during the Second World War his rigidity and caution exasperated first Hitler and then Churchill, who declared hj was a robot. He was expelled jrom the Communist party in the fifties when the Kruschjv government took over, but had his party card restored two years ago. MoreP213 CJEFAX 213 Mon 10 Nov 21:27/40 2/3 ] Former Soviet foreign minister Mr Viascheslav Molotov was one of the last survjvjng Bolsheviks. He helped organise the 1917 revolution that ended the reign of the Stars and went on to lead the Communist party. As Stalin's right-hand man he supported ruthless purges of peasants and the ex- Bolsheviks seen as a threat to Stalin. In the second world war he presented a grim face to the west, and his post-war intransigence helped establish the "cold war" suspicion between east and west. New Index 102/202 MoreP213 CJEFA( 213 Mon 10 Nov 21:22/15 3/3 Former Soviet foreign minister Mr Viascheslav Molotov, who has died aged 96, was one of the few major Soviet figures to re-emerge from obscurity. Aftea 30 years in dm gracC hj was readmitted to thu Communist party in an act smun br th west as nvsd nce of a drift ck to cold war attitud . In an intervoew last July ha said hj found the changes in Soviet life und Mr Gorbachev inspitingu His name is remembered for the crude bomb known as the "Molotov cocktail" thrown at Soviet troops in the Hungarian uprising of 1956. More