Liberal US senator mourned

Liberal US senator mourned

US president George W Bush has been leading tributes to the veteran former Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who has died at the age of 76.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A man of ideas

Moynihan, widely regarded as one of the pillars of US liberalism, died on Wednesday from complications after suffering a ruptured appendix.

"He committed his life to service and will be sorely missed," President Bush said.

News of his death was announced on the Senate floor by his successor in New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"We have lost a great American, an extraordinary senator, an intellectual and a man of passion and understanding for what really makes the country work," she said.

"For those of us who were privileged to know him, to work with him, to admire and respect him, this is a loss beyond my capacity to express."

Intellectual in politics

Moynihan retired in January 2001 after serving four six-year terms in the Senate and four consecutive presidents - both Democrats and Republicans.

Moynihan wrote more books than most senators have read

Columnist George Will

Following Moynihan's decades in American politics, ABC News described him as larger than life, provocative, theatrical and brilliant, and quoted the conservative columnist George Will who once said that Mr Moynihan "wrote more books than most senators have read".

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1927, he spent most of his childhood in a working-class district of New York known as Hell's Kitchen and went on to become a respected academic at Harvard University.

Before his involvement in politics he co-authored a work on a race and class in US life.

With President Richard Nixon in 1970

And in the mid-1960s he penned a now-famous report called The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Often referred to as the Moynihan Report, it warned that urban black families were disintegrating because of poverty and unemployment.

It upset many civil rights advocates, some of whom later recognised the justice of Moynihan's concerns.

Later, Moynihan argued that tough action against smaller street crimes like graffiti could influence the public and reduce the overall crime rate - an approach later adopted by New York City's mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Moynihan served as ambassador to India between 1973-75 and then as ambassador to the UN.

He was senator for New York from 1977 until 2001 and chaired the powerful Senate Finance Committee from 1993-95.

In a long obituary, The New York Times said Moynihan was always more a man of ideas than of legislation or partisan combat.

"He was enough of a politician to win re-election easily - and enough of a maverick with close Republican friends to be an occasional irritant to his Democratic party leaders," it said.

Concerned and engaged

During his term at the UN he chastised other countries for their anti-American rhetoric.

He labelled the Ugandan President Idi Amin "a racist murderer" and denounced the UN General Assembly for passing a resolution equating Zionism with racism.

"The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, and it will never acquiesce in this infamous act," he said.

And of the United States he said: "We are not prefect. And we make no pretence to perfection. What we hope for, what some of us pray for is simply that we should be concerned and engaged."

The New York Times closed its eulogy saying Moynihan's career in the Senate was "marked not by legislative milestones but by ideas".

Moynihan leaves a wife Elizabeth, three children and two grandchildren.