The American political elite said goodbye today in the church in Washington to Madeleine Albright (1937-2022), the first woman in the position of US Secretary of State.
The commemoration was led by US President Joseph Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who chose Albright as his top diplomat.
About 1.400 guests gathered to say goodbye to Albright, who died of cancer last month at the age of 84.
The service was attended by three state secretaries who succeeded her in office, as well as other current and former members of the government, foreign diplomats, MPs and a number of others who knew her.
Biden paid tribute to Albright, saying that "her name is synonymous with the idea that the United States is a force for good in the world."
Former President Clinton recalled that two weeks before she died, she told him that she "didn't want to talk about her deteriorating health at a time when the West is on edge after the Russian invasion of Ukraine," but that "the only thing that really matters is what kind of world will we leave to our grandchildren".
According to AP, foreign dignitaries were invited to the funeral, including the presidents of Georgia and Kosovo and high officials of Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Czech Republic.
Albright was born in Czechoslovakia, where her family fled twice - first from the Nazis and then from Soviet rule. They ended up in the United States, where she studied at Wellesley College and rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party's foreign policy circles. She became the US ambassador to the United Nations, and in 1996, Bill Clinton chose her as secretary of state.
As a Czech refugee who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet "Iron Curtain", she "wasn't a dove" - AP writes.
She played a leading role in pressuring the Clinton administration to get involved militarily in the conflict in Kosovo and, according to the US agency, as secretary of state, "Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 because of his treatment of Kosovo Albanians". The agency adds that this is why "NATO's intervention in Kosovo was eventually called 'Medlin's War'".
As ambassador to the UN, she advocated for a harsh US foreign policy, especially in the case of Milošević's activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina - writes AP.
She also had a tough stance on Cuba, memorably saying at the United Nations that the downing of a Cuban civilian airliner in 1996 was not "cohones" (street for: bravery) but "cowardice".
Clinton therefore recalled today that Albright was criticized at the time for being rude, "undiplomatic" and "unfeminine", but that he told her that he liked what she said and that it was "the best thing anyone has said in this government".
In 2012, Obama awarded Madeleine Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award, saying her life was "an inspiration to all Americans."
Born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague on May 15, 1937, she was the daughter of the diplomat Joseph Korbel. The family was Jewish and she converted to Roman Catholicism when she was five years old. Three of her Jewish grandparents died in concentration camps.
Albright was an internationalist whose views were partly shaped by her background, AP writes. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 when the Nazis occupied that country, and she spent the war years in London.
After World War II, as the Soviet Union occupied vast swaths of Eastern Europe, her father brought the family to the United States. They settled in Denver, where her father taught at the University. One of Korbel's best students was Condoleezza Rice, who would later succeed his daughter as US Secretary of State.
Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She worked as a journalist, and later studied International Relations at Columbia University, where she earned a master's degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. In 1976, she then entered male-dominated politics.
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