Short Trial Best, Albright Says

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Thursday that American foreign policy would be served best by a short impeachment trial of President Clinton.

“Obviously, the shorter it takes the better because there is this huge [foreign policy] agenda and the United States is indispensable,” she said in the course of a wide-ranging interview with The Times.

Although she noted that Clinton “has spent very, very large amounts of time on foreign policy while all this has been going on” and declared that the administration’s ability to deal with international issues has remained unaffected, she indicated valuable time has been lost simply explaining the nature of impeachment to mystified foreign leaders.

“They don’t understand how this could be happening because President Clinton has a huge international reputation,” she explained. “There’s too much to do here for you to be self-absorbed, is the way they would say it. And my problem is . . . I have a hard time explaining it.”