The New York Times

Tuesday, January 25, 2000

Firm Words From Albright About Helms and the U.N.

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 24 -- Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright felt compelled to remind the Security Council today who is in charge of foreign policy.

Her statement followed criticisms of the United Nations by Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a speech to the Security Council last Thursday, coupled with a warning that Americans would cast the organization off if it failed to meet their demands. After four days of silence from the Clinton administration, Dr. Albright set the record straight.

Only the president of the United States can speak for the American people, she said in impromptu remarks before making a speech on the topic of the day, the war in Congo.

"Today, on behalf of the president, let me say that the Clinton administration -- and I believe that most Americans -- see our role in the world and our relationship to this organization quite differently than does Senator Helms," said Dr. Albright, who was presiding over the special Security Council session. The United States holds the rotating council presidency for January.

"We strongly support the United Nations charter and the organization's purpose," she said. "We respect its rules, which we helped to write. We want to strengthen it through continued reform, and we recognize its many contributions to our own interest in a more secure, democratic and humane world."

Mr. Helms had argued that the anticommunist Reagan doctrine had made the world democratic without the help of the United Nations.

Some American officials were concerned that Mr. Helms, a conservative North Carolina Republican, had not been challenged in the council by someone representing the United States government.

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was given the floor to respond only at a closed-door lunch the next day.

The secretary of state described Mr. Helms as a man with strong convictions who had his own point of view about the United Nations. "He and I have made a point of working together when we can, and making sure that when we disagree, we do so agreeably," she said. "So let me be clear: only the president and the executive branch can speak for the United States."

Dr. Albright, a veteran of much give and take at the United Nations from her years as the American representative in the first Clinton administration, chided the council for its failure to approve Secretary General Kofi Annan's choice of a new chief arms inspector for Iraq.

A week ago, Mr. Annan named Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish disarmament expert who had been chief inspector under a previous disarmament commission from 1991 to 1997, when he resigned to become Sweden's ambassador to the United States.

Russia and France, with some support from China, are blocking the appointment.

"While the work that we did here today on Africa is obviously very important, there is no more important subject for the Security Council to deal with than Iraq," Dr. Albright said. "I was deeply disappointed by some of the discussions last week, in which the Security Council did not honor the agreement made that the secretary general would name a chairman."

Dr. Albright said she found it "mightily ironic" that when Richard Butler held the position of chief arms inspector after Mr. Ekeus, some of the same countries who longed to have Mr. Ekeus back did not want him now. "I do think that the work of the Council on Iraq is not finished," she said, prodding the council to put the issue back on the table.