Albright issues a thinly veiled challenge to Bush

By Elaine Monaghan/Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged the next U.S. president Monday to take a forward-looking approach to foreign policy, in a thinly veiled challenge to Republican nominee George W. Bush.

In response to a question about her views on Bush's foreign policy goals, she said, without naming him, "I think that what's very important is to keep remembering what is in U.S. national interests in the 21st century -- and it's not your father's foreign policy."

A Democrat, Albright has kept her distance from party politics as secretary of state while President Clinton faced a Republican-dominated legislature that did not give him a clear run at his foreign policy goals.

She often jokes that she has had her political instincts surgically removed but sometimes has to "see the surgeon."

Monday was apparently such an occasion, as Bush -- whose father, President George Bush, lost the 1992 election to Clinton -- continued battling Democratic nominee Al Gore for the White House after days of Florida vote counting and recounting in one of the closest U.S. elections ever.

After her standard line about the surgeon, Albright said, "What I am most concerned about ... is that we should not be tempted to turn our back on the issues of new foreign policy."

She spoke in favor of keeping humanitarian issues and the spread of AIDS on Washington's national security agenda.

The Bush campaign has stressed restricting U.S. intervention to areas of national interest and reviewing the presence of U.S. forces around the world.

"I think also we can't just pick and choose where we will employ our strength," Albright said.

These were also themes that dominated a speech she had just delivered: the new economy, nuclear nonproliferation, environmental and women's issues, drugs and HIV/AIDS.

"Those have not normally in the past been considered high-security issues, but they are," she said.

She also praised Gore, saying, "Vice President Gore has properly identified AIDS as a danger to world security."

Bush's foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said during the election campaign that Balkan peacekeeping should be left to Europeans. His staff later reassured NATO that he would not unilaterally withdraw troops from the Balkans.

Marc Ginsburg, who co-chairs Gore's foreign policy advisory group, dubbed the Bush approach "quasi-isolationism" and suggested he would turn his back on Europe, Africa and NATO.

Albright, who was accused of being too quick to employ force against Yugoslavia's then President Slobodan Milosevic over Kosovo, also defended her record on that score -- and the agenda that drove NATO's military campaign, of defending ethnic Albanians' rights in the Yugoslav province.

"Clearly the United States has strategic interests, and one could name them. But it doesn't mean that one doesn't pay attention to humanitarian interests," she said.

"I believe that violations of people's humanity and crimes against people have to be dealt with by the United States in partnership with others," she said.

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