The death has been announced in Dakar, Senegal on Sunday of Dr Momodou Lamin Sidat Jobe, a former senior official at UNESCO after a terminal illness.
He was 80.
Dr Jobe a career Gambian diplomat, was director of culture at UNESCO between 1981 and 1997 after teaching at the University of Dakar from 1974 to 1978.
He also taught at Howard University from 1978 to 1980.
The diplomat turned politician who was fluent in both English and French was educated in Grenoble University in France.
On his return home in The Gambia, Dr Jobe was appointed foreign affairs minister by President Yahya Jammeh and took the role of mediator during the civil war in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau in the late 1990s.
In protest over the expulsion from Banjul of deputy British High Commissioner, Bharat Joshi, Dr Jobe handed in his resignation to Jammeh in August 2001 but maintained support for the government.
He however went into self-imposed exile in Sweden and joined in the struggle to remove Jammeh from power as a senior member of the opposition United Democratic Party.
He was a strong advocate of achieving this by a military coup should constitutional attempts to remove Jammeh failed.
WN/as/APA