Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 6 June 2004 — Ronald Reagan, who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was “morning again in America,” died yesterday at his home in California after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, a family friend said. He was 93.

Five years after leaving office, the nation’s 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”

Reagan’s body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, California, and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders.