Albright Focuses On Goals, Faces Foes

By ERIC RICH
This story ran in the Courant February 7, 1999

MIDDLETOWN - Three students acting as unofficial ambassadors for a knot of protesters sat down Saturday afternoon with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Wesleyan University to discuss the sanctions against Iraq.

They described her as a good listener, but someone with whom they could find no common ground.

Albright received the three after speaking at a conference on the domestic impacts of foreign policy, where she did not mention Iraq, despite protests outside and even interruptions by four activists during her speech.

Instead, in her keynote address, Albright urged support of President Clinton's recent request for more funding to promote U.S. interests abroad.

Albright warned of a ``serious gap'' between the country's international goals and its willingness to provide resources to achieve those goals. She said the choice between ``funding and short-changing U.S. leadership'' is among the most critical issues facing Congress today.

In the wide-ranging speech, Albright said the country must defend itself not against a single powerful threat, as during The Cold War, but rather against ``a viper's nest of perils.'' The central lesson of this century, she said, is that regional conflicts, left unresolved, ``will all too often come home to America.''

Amid increasing indications that the United States might soon send troops to Kosovo, Albright said resolving even such remote conflicts is critical. She said failure to hammer out a peace in the Balkans, where World War I began, could even ignite ``another major conflagration that would cost thousands more American lives.''

On the same day that negotiations were slated to start on the fate of the separatist province, she argued that committing U.S. troops to a NATO peace-keeping force in Kosovo might improve the chances for success.

``And failure in the talks could result in renewed wide-scale violence that would cause massive human suffering, jeopardize gains made in Bosnia and threaten stability through much of Europe,'' she said.

Despite a crowd of activists and students from Wesleyan and elsewhere gathered outside Crowell Hall, Albright made no mention of Iraq.

But when two activists, neither of whom were students, interrupted Albright by calling her a war criminal whose sanctions amount to genocide, the secretary was briefly silenced and then shot back, ``Don't talk to me about genocide.''

The response by Albright, whose relatives were killed by the Nazis, met with resounding applause from an audience of 400 that gasped with annoyance at the protesters.

When two more protesters began chanting slogans moments later, the secretary extended an invitation. ``You know what,'' she said as the protesters were led out by security, ``I would be delighted to meet with you later.''

As it turned out, Albright did not meet with the four protesters who were removed, but she did meet with Wesleyan sophomore Meredith Lobel, who organized the student protests outside, and two others.

Lobel, who is from Weston, left the 25-minute meeting at the home of University President Douglas Bennet with a sense of fundamental differences.

But she said Albright listened well and seemed genuinely interested in the students' views. The meeting ended, another student said, when someone delivered Albright a memo: War had broken out in Africa, a reference to clashes between Ethiopian and Eritrean troops Saturday.