Kissinger leaves hospital after heart attack

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Former secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger was released from the hospital on Monday after having a heart attack last week.

"Dr. Kissinger was released this afternoon," a spokeswoman for New York Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital said.

The spokeswoman said she had no further details.

Kissinger, hospitalized on Thursday after suffering a "limited heart attack," served under Nixon and Ford

Kissinger, 77, who served as secretary of state under President Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford, suffered what doctors called a "limited heart attack" and was admitted to the hospital on Oct. 25.

German-born Kissinger shaped policies behind major world events of the 1970s, including the Vietnam peace agreement, the reopening of U.S.-Chinese relations, growing contact between Israel and the Arab world and U.S.-Soviet arms control talks.

His era as high-powered architect of U.S. foreign policy waned with the decline of Nixon in the Watergate scandal, although he has continued to be an independent diplomatic mover-and-shaker.

Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho for his work on the Paris peace accords reached in 1973.

In 1982, five years after leaving government service, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, a high-priced New York-based consulting firm. He underwent bypass surgery the same year.

Kissinger also worked as an on-air foreign policy expert for ABC television, wrote a syndicated newspaper column and earned a reported $20,000 for each of some 20 speeches he made in a year.

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