Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and former Czech president has died at the age of 75.

Mr. Havel was his country's first democratically elected president after the non-violent “Velvet Revolution” that ended four decades of repression.

As president, he oversaw Czechoslovakia's transition to democracy and the free-market economy, as well as its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Mr. Havel said his proudest achievement as president was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact – the Moscow-led military alliance that lasted until 1991.