A spokesman for the US Navy -- a branch that Nitze once headed -- confirmed his death.

Nitze served in several top government posts, including secretary of the navy 1963-67 and deputy secretary of defense 1967-69.

Nitze headed the US arms negotiationg team with the Soviet Union in the 1980s under Reagan.

The Harvard graduate worked for many years as an investment banker before taking his first government post in 1940 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1943 Nitze co-founded the Washington-based School of Advanced International Studies, an influential graduate studies center that in 1950 became a division of The Johns Hopkins University.