Albright Hails U.N. Defusing of Iraq Crisis

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered a ringing endorsement Thursday of peacemaking efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying the United Nations worked exactly as it was supposed to when it mediated an end to the confrontation with Iraq.

Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Albright offered the Clinton administration’s most upbeat analysis to date of the effort to rein in Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

She praised Annan’s February trip to Baghdad, which headed off planned U.S. airstrikes and cleared the way for a resumption of inspections aimed at destroying Iraq’s chemical and biological arsenal. “So far, inspections have gone well,” she said, before adding a note of caution: “But the process of testing Iraq’s commitments has only begun.”

She said the administration “will explore ways to work more effectively with the Iraqi democratic opposition.” But she did not elaborate.

Albright offered a sardonic response to Republican lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, who criticized Annan’s efforts to defuse the crisis, noting that some critics refuse to give the U.N. credit for anything. She likened the attitude on Capitol Hill to the views of conspiracy theorists who believe that the United Nations will one day attempt to conquer the world by dispatching agents in a fleet of black helicopters.

“I thought, frankly, being a fairly logical person, that this would help our case on the Hill--that the U.N. had done its job,” she said. “However, there are those who somehow cannot give the U.N. credit for anything--the black helicopter crowd . . . [who] see this [as] having been a derogation of American sovereignty.”

She said the crisis dramatized the value of U.N. diplomacy, backed up by the threat of U.S. military force.

Albright linked her praise of Annan with a renewed plea to Congress to appropriate money to cover about $1 billion in U.S. back dues to the United Nations. “Paying our U.N. bills is not just a question of dollars and cents,” she said. “It is a matter of honor, of keeping our word. It is in our interest and a litmus test of our willingness to practice what we preach.” The comment produced the only round of applause that interrupted her speech.

Albright also called on Serbia to end the police repression of Kosovo, a province where 90% of the population is ethnic Albanian. “For the Balkans, this escalating violence is the road back to hell,” she said. “Unless stopped, tensions will flow out of control. The result could be a full-fledged civil war, putting at risk the peace in Bosnia and spreading like an infectious disease to neighboring states.”

At the same time, she gave no hint of Washington’s response if the crisis does spin out of control.

Responding to a question, Albright said that unless the year-long deadlock in Middle East negotiations is broken soon, the United States will have to change course--either by publishing its own plan for a settlement and pressuring Israelis and Palestinians to accept it, or by ending the U.S. mediation entirely. But, she said, the latest trip to the region by U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross “produced some small steps. We want to see where they lead before we make that kind of a determination.”