Salvador "Doy" Laurel, former vice president of the Philippines, has succumbed to a lingering bout with lymphoma at the age of 75, reports reaching Manila from the United States where he died, said.

His nephew, former ambassador Jose Laurel III, said his uncle lapsed into a coma several days before he died midnight Tuesday, Manila time.

"He asked that he be taken to his home in California from the hospital before he died," Laurel III told in a phone interview by television station ABS-CBN in Manila.

Laurel flew to the US in June 2003 to undergo chemotheraphy at the Stanford University Hospital after he was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes.

Although he had been indicted for charges of fraud in connection with a 1997 government project before he left the Philippines last year, Laurel is best remembered as a leader who fought against the dictatorship of president Ferdinand Marcos. Laurel broke from the Marcos government in 1980 after serving as member of parliament.

He founded the United National Democratic Organisation (UNIDO), a coalition of all anti-Marcos parties that helped Corazon Aquino take the presidency in 1986. In Manila, President Gloria Arroyo mourned the loss of Laurel.

"He loved freedom and voluntarily fought for it," Arroyo's spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement.

Bunye and Vice-President Teofisto Guingona said Laurel showed true statesmanship when he abandoned his own plan to seek the presidency and agreed to be the vice presidential running mate of former president Corazon Aquino in 1986 while setting aside his own plans to seek the presidency.

"He never blinked against the dictatorship, and when it was necessary to fully unite the political opposition, Doy displayed true statesmanship and set aside his own dream to be president," Guingona said.