The first female US secretary of state, Madeleine Korbel Albright, has passed at the age of 84.
The family in a statement said Madeleine Albright, died on Wednesday of cancer.
She was “surrounded by family and friends” at the time, her family said.
In 1997, following Bill Clinton’s reelection as US president, Albright was sworn in as the country’s first female secretary of state.
By then Albright, a political science professor, had already made a name for herself as a foreign policy adviser to several Democratic presidential candidates — including Clinton.
Most Europeans welcomed her nomination, expecting her to show a special interest in the countries of central and eastern Europe as well as former Soviet republics.
In 1993, during his first term in office, Clinton had made Albright the US ambassador to the United Nations.
During her first year as the top US diplomat, Albright — who spoke Czech, English, French, Russian, Serbian, and Polish — set a record for foreign visits, with 98, only beaten by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, with 102.
During her tenure, Albright focused on advancing the Middle East peace process, improving ties with China and Russia, and promoting NATO’s eastern enlargement. She also upheld America’s tough stance via-a-vis Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic.
In 1999, she pushed for a NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict against Serbia to end massacres against the Albanian minority — even without UN backing. It was during this time that she met and ultimately befriended Germany’s then-Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who later called her a “fascinating political figure and close personal friend.”
‘Fascinating political figure’
“Back then, hardly anyone through a woman could do this job,” Albright said of the mood when she took office. As a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the presidency in 2016, Albright said there was “a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” And, despite different political worldviews, she was friends with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served under President George W. Bush.
Albright was famous for practicing “jewelry-box diplomacy.” She even wrote a book, “Read My Pins,” about her fondness for using pins to convey subtle, or not so subtle, political messages.
The secretary of state’s tenure ended when President Clinton was succeeded by George W. Bush in the 2001 election.
She was adamant that, despite leaving the administration, she would remain involved in foreign affairs, calling the United States an “indispensable nation.”
Indeed, Albright did just that when she urged her successor, Colin Powell, to put down the phone and travel to the Middle East to promote regional peace talks. She similarly didn’t mince when words when she said the Iraq war was “going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy because we have lost the element of the goodness of American power and we have lost our moral authority.” She said the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and George W. Bush’s policies had tarnished America’s standing.
Albright, who was raised Catholic and had wanted to become a priest as a little girl, only learned of her Jewish roots at age 59 — and that many of her relatives were killed in the Holocaust. She told her family history in “Prague Winter,” her 2012 memoir. Born in the Bohemian capital on May 15, 1937, Albright and her family moved to London just before Nazi Germany invaded what was then Czechoslovakia.
After the war, the family returned to Prague. Upon the Communist takeover, the family fled once more — this time to the United States. Albright became a US citizen in 1957.
Later in life, Albright served as foreign policy adviser to US President Barack Obama, established the Albright Stonebridge Group consulting agency and taught at Georgetown University.
In 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama. The medal is traditionally awarded for “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
Albright had three daughters.
By Jamila Akweley Okerrchiri