Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s former foreign minister and first openly gay leader of a mainstream political party, has died aged 54, just months after presenting the book he had written on battling leukaemia.

Westerwelle led German diplomacy from 2009-2013, when his business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) were in government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

He became party leader in 2001 and also went on to serve as German Vice Chancellor after the FDP’s best ever election result in 2009 when it won nearly 15 percent of the vote.

In March 2011, Westerwelle came under fire for siding with China and Russia and abstaining in a vote in the United Nations Security Council authorising a no-fly zone over Libya, a mission that later led to the toppling of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

His decision looks better with hindsight, given the turmoil that has swept Libya since Gaddafi’s fall.

But at the time, Westerwelle was criticised for ignoring decades of German policy in breaki