Secretary Of State U S

President Clinton, laying the foundation for his second-term Cabinet, nominated U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright on Thursday to be the nation's first female secretary of State and chose retiring Republican Sen. William S. Cohen of Maine to be secretary of Defense. Ending a tortuous search for a national security team, Clinton also named National Security Advisor Anthony Lake to run the troubled Central Intelligence Agency and filled Lake's current post with his deputy, Samuel R.

Lawrence S. Eagleburger was sworn in as secretary of state in a surprise White House ceremony. Eagleburger, 62, had been acting secretary of state since Aug. 23. He was summoned to the Oval Office for what he had been told was a briefing on Somalia. Instead, he found his family and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia waiting with a Bible. The recess appointment will allow Eagleburger to serve with full Cabinet rank for the final six weeks of Bush's presidency.

Czech-born Madeleine Albright, chosen to take a place in history as America's first female secretary of State, has not been a popular figure in the corridors of the United Nations for the past four years. But the main complaint about her as the American U.N. ambassador--that she turns a deaf ear to the pleas of other nations while she tries to ram through approval of the views of Washington--surely has enhanced her image in the eyes of President Clinton.

He was a week into his 30,000-mile tour of Asia, in the third of the nine Pacific Rim cities he would visit, when Secretary of State George P. Shultz allowed himself to talk, fleetingly, of the life he plans at the end of the Reagan Administration. "I'll be back at Stanford next year," he told an audience in Indonesia. "They offered me a chair there. I told them I'm working hard and, by the time I get there, I may not need a chair. I may need a couch."

Four months after becoming America's top diplomat, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can look back on a remarkable start. Even her critics preface their comments with praise as they review a period in which she has: * Established herself as the most visible, colorful figure of President Clinton's second-term Cabinet, whose Stetson hats have become an unlikely symbol of U.S.

Despite a dismaying catalog of government-sanctioned murder, torture and repression, respect for individual liberty and democracy has never been greater, with more people living under elected governments than ever before, the State Department said Friday in its annual report on human rights around the globe. "We are blessed to live at a time of broader respect for basic human rights than ever before in history," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters.

Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice plans to name a tough foreign policy pragmatist, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick, as her deputy, sources said Thursday. The move reportedly prompted the resignation of the State Department's most prominent hard-liner, John R. Bolton, who had also sought the job. The choice of Zoellick, a longtime associate of former Secretary of State James A.

As the curtain rose Tuesday on her sure-to-be-contentious Senate confirmation hearing, Condoleezza Rice entered the packed hearing room with one California Democrat on her side and the other one the thorn in it. First, Rice, President Bush's nominee for secretary of State, listened as Sen. Dianne Feinstein called the nominee a "remarkable woman" and recounted her rise from segregated Alabama to provost of Stanford University and presidential advisor.

Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the nation's first female secretary of State on Thursday. She declared that the United States must never be "complacent or timid or unwilling to look beyond our borders." President Clinton beamed as Albright repeated the oath of office administered by Vice President Al Gore in an Oval Office ceremony. Albright's daughters, Alice, Anne and Katie, also watched.

Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice told Congress on Tuesday that the Iraqi insurgency "cannot be overcome by military force alone," but declined to predict how long U.S. troops must remain in the country while waiting for Iraqis to forge political solutions and assume responsibility for security.