Albright Is Team Player, Tough Fighter

Czech-born Madeleine Albright, chosen to take a place in history as America’s first female secretary of State, has not been a popular figure in the corridors of the United Nations for the past four years.

But the main complaint about her as the American U.N. ambassador--that she turns a deaf ear to the pleas of other nations while she tries to ram through approval of the views of Washington--surely has enhanced her image in the eyes of President Clinton.

Albright, a 59-year-old former professor, made it clear soon after she arrived at the United Nations that she looked on her work there as only one of several roles in the administration. Clinton had named her to the Cabinet and to the team of White House “principals” who set foreign policy. Rather than bog herself down completely in interminable meetings and negotiations in New York, she shuttled as often as possible to Washington for policy sessions.

Albright prides herself as a team player and has said very little in public about the positions she has taken in those private discussions at the White House. In fact, she was furious during her first year as ambassador when stories were leaked that she had written a memo to Clinton advocating the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs as punishment for their policy of “ethnic cleansing.”

But she is known to have been a strong supporter of the U.N. tribunal set up to punish war criminals in Bosnia. And she has not denied reports that she wanted the White House to support a complete international ban on the manufacture of land mines.

She has spoken forcefully and persuasively for administration foreign policy, even when changes in direction have obliged her to contradict earlier statements.

Personable and clear-minded, Albright emerged as the most dynamic official to articulate administration foreign policy on television. Broadcasters clearly found Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake too soporific for television audiences. They often turned instead to Albright.

Throughout her tenure at the United Nations, Albright was conscious of her status as a woman in a virtual men’s club. No other woman sat on the Security Council with her during the past four years. Only one other American woman had ever served as U.N. ambassador, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick in the Reagan administration.

She was just as conscious Thursday of her unique status as the first woman ever named to be secretary of State. Addressing Christopher in a ceremony Thursday at the White House, she said with a smile: “I can only hope that my heels can fill your shoes.”

Clinton insisted that he had nominated her only because she was the most qualified of those he had considered for the post. “Am I proud that I got a chance to appoint the first woman secretary of State?” the president asked. “You bet I am. My mama’s smiling down at me right now. But that is not why I appointed her.”

While maintaining tough stances at the United Nations on such issues as reform of the institution, sanctions against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the American veto of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for a second term, Albright has never tried to hide her femininity.

On Feb. 14, taking her turn as president of the Security Council, she surprised the other ambassadors by placing red bags of candy and cookies in front of them. Although she often tried to prove that she was one of the boys, Albright explained, she wanted to let the other ambassadors know on Valentine’s Day that it was a treat to be the only woman with 14 such intelligent and handsome men.

During her first year at the United Nations, Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria was pleased to receive a note after he criticized the United States strenuously for delaying the passage of a resolution on Bosnia. “No matter what, Diego,” the note from Albright said, “our friendship is still secure.”

Noting Albright’s habit of lunching with the handful of other female ambassadors at the United Nations, a European ambassador lamented this week: “She held a meeting once a month with all the women ambassadors at the U.N. but never had time to meet with the ambassadors from Europe.”

Albright will be the second foreign-born secretary of State. Like the first, Henry A. Kissinger, she too was a child refugee of Nazism.

“I was not born in this country,” she said at the White House ceremony. “Because of my parents’ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia--first by Hitler and then by Stalin. Because of this nation’s kindness, we were granted political asylum and I have had the opportunity to live my life among the most generous and courageous people on Earth.”

Albright was born in Prague in 1937, two years before German troops invaded and occupied her country. Her father, Josef Korbel, a diplomat, escaped with his family to Britain, and his daughter spent the World War II years in London and at a school in Switzerland.

After the war, Korbel returned to the Czech diplomatic service. He was ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1948 when a Communist coup overthrew the democratic government of Czechoslovakia.

Korbel and his wife, Anna, sought and received asylum in the United States. They and their three children settled in Colorado when Korbel found a job as a professor at the University of Denver.

Madeleine, who had hoped to become a reporter, married Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, the heir of a wealthy newspaper family, three days after her graduation from Wellesley College. The couple had twins and a third child, all daughters.

She earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in Russian history at Columbia University and went to work in 1968 on the staff of the late Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, a Maine Democrat. She worked on the National Security Council staff in the Carter administration.

In 1981, she and her husband were divorced. She took a job as a professor of international relations at Georgetown University and became prominent in Democratic Party politics.

During the 1992 presidential election, she joined Clinton’s foreign policy team.

Soon after she arrived at the U.S. mission at the United Nations, Albright scoured the offices for a work of art that she knew must be hidden there somewhere. She finally found it--a bust of Adlai E. Stevenson III, who had once served as U.N. ambassador and was one of her heroes. The bust soon occupied a prominent place in her office.

In an irony of history, she has now been nominated to a position that her hero coveted all his life.

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this story.