Madeleine Albright, US' first female top diplomat, dies at 84

WASHINGTON • Ms Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US secretary of state and a grande dame of foreign policy for the Democratic Party who wrote books, served on think-tank boards and warned of the risk of fascism in the Donald Trump era, has died. She was 84.

She died on Wednesday, according to a statement from her family posted on Ms Albright's Twitter account. The cause was cancer.

Appointed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996, halfway through his two-term presidency, Ms Albright became the highest-ranking woman in US government at the time.

As America's top diplomat, she called for the use of force as the conflict in Kosovo descended into ethnic cleansing.

That was consistent with the hard line she had pressed during the Bosnian War, when she was Mr Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations.

She later described the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the failure to achieve a Middle East peace accord as among her biggest regrets.

"Madeleine's courage and toughness helped bring peace to the Balkans and paved the way for progress in some of the most unstable corners of the world," then-President Barack Obama said upon awarding Ms Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour, in 2012.

Responding to news of her death, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: "The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day. She was a trailblazer as the first female secretary of state and quite literally opened doors for a large element of our workforce."

In a statement, Mr Clinton called Ms Albright "an extraordinary human being" and "a passionate force for freedom, democracy and human rights".

At 1.5m tall, Ms Albright was famous for well-tailored suits adorned with pins or brooches, ranging from balloons to carnivorous animals and chosen to reflect a mood or an opinion.

After learning that the Russians had bugged a conference room near her office at the State Department, for example, she wore a pin shaped like a huge bug.

In an opinion column published on Feb 23 in The New York Times, just before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Ms Albright took direct aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

She disclosed that while flying back to Washington after her first meeting with Mr Putin in 2000, she recorded her observations of the Russian leader: "Putin is small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian.

"Instead of paving Russia's path to greatness," she wrote in the column, "invading Ukraine would ensure Mr Putin's infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance."

An emigrant who fled Czechoslovakia at the dawn of World War II only to discover her own Jewish heritage more than a half-century later, Ms Albright witnessed first-hand the displacement of those deemed undesirable.

"In the end, no one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948 was a stranger to profound sadness," Ms Albright wrote in Prague Winter, her personal account of the period.

"Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten."

Ms Albright's defence of the ideals of democracy remained strong. The ascendancy of authoritarian leaders was "a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II", she wrote in a 2018 essay in The New York Times that coincided with the publication of her book Fascism: A Warning.

She added: "The possibility that fascism will be accorded a fresh chance to strut around the world stage is enhanced by the volatile presidency of Mr Donald Trump.

In October 2000, she became the highest-ranking US representative to make an official visit to North Korea, holding a meeting with then-President Kim Jong Il.

Ms Albright never lost sight of the way her career broke through glass ceilings and made a point of promoting the careers of women throughout her professional life.

In fact, she made famous a mantra: "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other."

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