A New "New World Order"?:-)

        [NOTE: Tears of gratitude are rolling down the cheeks
        of myriads of poor Colombian peasants tonight as they
        contemplate the magnanimity of Senora Albright's plan
        for the future of Colombia.  WIth trembling voices they
        shout: "Long LIve the New New World Order!":-)     -DG]

                ==================================================
                The new order, she said, would enable its members
                to work more  productively to protect their own
                freedoms and help those countries within  reach of
                self-government take the final steps toward
                democracy. She cited  four initial candidates:
                Colombia, Ukraine, Nigeria and Indonesia.
_____________   ==================================================

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Monday, 18 January 1999

                Albright Announces `Democracy Club' Plan
                      As One of Her Final Goals
                ----------------------------------------

        By Tyler Marshall, Norman Kempster

As she contemplates the last two years of her Cabinet tenure, U.S.
Secretary  of State Madeleine Albright has begun drawing plans for a new
international  order, one that would revamp existing global institutions
and spawn entirely new ones.

Albright sketched the outlines of her idea for a new, formal grouping of
the world's democratic nations in a wide-ranging interview.

The new order, she said, would enable its members to work more
productively to protect their own freedoms and help those countries within
reach of self-government take the final steps toward democracy. She cited
four initial candidates: Colombia, Ukraine, Nigeria and Indonesia.

An aide referred to Albright's concept as a kind of international
``democracy club.''

``The 21st century . . . ought to be the century of democracy,'' Albright
said during the interview, conducted in her offices on the seventh floor
of  the State Department. ``We're going to be putting an awful lot more
emphasis  on organizing the democracies, working with them . . . so that
they can work  with each other better.''

There will be no retreat from global responsibilities for the United
States as it enters the next century, she stressed. The challenge is
determining how the United States can best project its enormous power.

Other nations will ``either organize with us or against us,'' she said.
``But we are the organizing principle, and we have to understand our
responsibilities.''

During the interview, Albright:

-- Stressed the need to combat the growing danger inherent in the spread
of weapons of mass destruction, especially from an economically unstable
Russia.

-- Suggested for the first time that she would support deployment of an
anti-missile defense system under certain conditions to combat the
proliferation threat.

 -- Cited the imminent enlargement of NATO to include Hungary, Poland and
her native Czech Republic as the event that ``I feel best about and
proudest of.''

Albright, 61, achieved celebrity status in January 1997, when she became
the United States' first female secretary of state. She dominated the
American foreign policy arena during much of her first year in office with
infectious enthusiasm, snappy sound bites and a string of diplomatic
successes.

Last year was different.

The crises that swept Southeast Asia and Russia were, at their heart,
financial dilemmas, shifting key decisions from Albright's State
Department  to the Treasury. The standoffs in Kosovo and Iraq had strong
military  dimensions, elevating the Pentagon, the White House and
President Clinton's  national security adviser, Samuel R. ``Sandy''
Berger.

As she outlined her priorities for the next two years, she left little
doubt that she plans to devote more of her energy to changing the global
political system and the way Washington deals with it -- changes she
believes will better position the United States for the challenges of the
21st century.

Elaborating on Albright's comments, a senior State Department official
said conceptual planning for a new organization of democratic states is
still in its early stages. He indicated that the proposal has not been
discussed with other governments, but Albright hopes ``to have a concrete
program, a road map to that general goal, in a matter of weeks, perhaps by
the beginning of the spring.''

The senior official suggested that multinational institutions normally
not associated with the State Department -- such as the International
Monetary Fund or the World Bank -- could fall within the scope of the
department's review.

Albright's formulation is the latest effort by U.S. officials to define
the U.S. role as the sole superpower in the post-Cold War world.

In 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, then President Bush talked
about a ``new world order'' that would avoid the strife of previous
decades.

In 1993, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Albright suggested a
policy of ``assertive multilateralism.'' Critics complained that her idea
also assigned too important a role to the U.N. bureaucracy and to other
members of the world organization.

Today, Albright contends that the nation faces ``a very dangerous
situation'' in the short term caused by the threatened spread of weapons
of  mass destruction, especially by rogue states such as Iraq and North
Korea  and transnational terrorist organizations.

        Copyright 1999 San Francisco Chronicle
_______________________________________________________________________
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