Kirkpatrick Rules Out Running for Office

U.S. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a longtime Democrat, confirmed Tuesday that she will formally join the Republican Party next week but she told a farewell news conference that she has no intention--”ever”--of running for elective office.

She will close out her four-year service at the United Nations this week. But when asked if she might follow in the footsteps of two predecessors--Vice President George Bush and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.)--in campaigning for office, she replied:

“I do not intend to run for office.” When the questioner persisted, she added: “ever.” But she will attend a party in Washington next Wednesday to “formally mark my entrance into the Republican Party.”

The former Georgetown University political science professor, named to her U.N. post after President Reagan read a magazine article that she had written on foreign policy, said she will return to her work at the Washington institution.

Plans to Write Book

She also said she plans to write a book on her experiences here, to go on the national lecture circuit and to become a syndicated columnist.

Last year, Kirkpatrick won a standing ovation for a speech at the Republican National Convention and she has strong support from party conservatives. She was reported last week to be considering a primary challenge next year to Sen. Charles McC. Mathias (R-Md.), but Tuesday she vigorously denied such an ambition.

When asked the reason for her unwillingness to enter elective politics, she drew laughter as she countered: “Why didn’t I decide to be an acrobat?

“At some stage of life, I got more hooked on writing,” the 58-year-old diplomat said. “I have a lot of respect for public officeholders but it just never seemed to be something I wanted to be.”

Security Council Role

Much of the half-hour news conference at the U.S. mission was devoted to the issue of whether the United States’ chief representative at the United Nations should continue to sit regularly in the National Security Council.

The White House has announced that Kirkpatrick’s designated successor here, retired Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters, will join the council only when invited by the President. Kirkpatrick, though not a statutory member of the council, had unrestricted access to its meetings.

Walters is reported to have threatened to withdraw his acceptance of the U.N. post after the NSC restriction was made clear to him by Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Saturday after Walters had met with Reagan the day before.

However, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Tuesday in Washington that Walters’ nomination had been formally sent to the Senate Monday. Speakes also said that national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane had talked with Walters on Tuesday and that Walters had agreed to accept the U.N. post.

Not Statutory Member

Speakes said Walters’ status will be the same as Kirkpatrick’s in that she was not a statutory member of the council and did not attend all of the body’s meetings. (By law, the council is chaired by the President and its statutory members are the vice president and secretaries of state and defense. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is statutory military adviser and the director of the CIA is intelligence adviser.)

Kirkpatrick, however, referred to herself at Tuesday’s news conference here as “a member” of the National Security Council and stressed the importance of participation in policy-making in enabling her to do her job here.

“We deal with all the countries in the world and on almost all the problems of the world here,” she said. “If you have a good, firm, clear sense of the goals and approaches and methods of our government in foreign affairs, then you have much firmer ground for responding” to the questions and criticisms of other nations’ representatives.

Later in the evening, Kirkpatrick paid a farewell call on U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. She said she will return to Washington at the end of this week.