ALBRIGHT: U.S. MUST LEAD : BUT IDENTIFYING FOES NOT SIMPLE IN CHANGING WORLD.

If President Clinton is re-elected and Secretary of State Warren Christopher follows through with his reported wish to resign his post, a leading candidate to succeed him in a second Clinton administration is Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.

In addition to her present status as a Cabinet member, Albright is a member of the National Security Council - the first time a U.S. delegate to the U.N. has been made a full member of that key Administration policy-making group.

Albright, 59, taught international relations at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Services from 1982 until her appointment to the United Nations in early 1993. The Czech-born diplomat, author and academic is a strong proponent of the view that America has an indispensible role in global leadership.

Albright met recently with Daily News editors and reporters to discuss these and other issues. The following excerpts have been edited for length and clarity:

Daily News: In the recent debate between vice presidential candidates, Jack Kemp said weakness is provocative. How does that apply, if at all, to current U.S. policy?

Albright: First of all, I don't think we're weak at all.

Second, there's no question that this is a very complex period in foreign policy. We're poised between two choices of foreign policy: One where you get overwhelmed by chaos, and the other where you position the United States for leadership.

What we've been doing is, I think, positioning the U.S. in a very strong way to be able to lead. It's not easy because the enemy is not that identifiable. The threats are very different from the kind of threats that we saw at the end of the Second World War and for 50 years through the communist period.

To those who are trying to get some kind of a classical fix on foreign policy - a very clear enemy, two sides lined up against each other, military threats - it looks as though there's no plan, when the truth is that what we're doing is addressing the new threats that are sometimes regional disputes that might spill over, ethnic violence, terrorism, drugs, nuclear proliferation, and a series of those kinds of issues.

Now, in terms of strength, there's no doubt in my mind that the U.S. is the strongest country in the world. We have the best military in the world, that is the best-trained and the best-equipped. Weakness is provocative, sure. But we just happen not to be weak.

Q. Does the U.S. have sufficient diplomatic strength, as distinguished from military strength?

A. Yes. The U.S. has incredible diplomatic strength. But what we try to do - and where it's a little bit different from previous times - is, we try to bring others along at various stages and try to create ad hoc coalitions to deal with particular issues, get our allies to work with us, try to reach out a little bit more to others and look for different areas to develop partnerships. We're spending time trying to get Latin Americans feeling more as if they were partners rather than dominating them, and a different relationship with the European allies.

Q. Yet, many ordinary Americans perceive U.S. diplomatic leadership as somewhat weak or ineffective. For example, the United States hopes there won't be a second term for U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of obvious international support for that.

A. First of all, I would dispute the ``weak'' part. The role that we diplomatically play in Bosnia, the role that we're playing in Haiti, in the Middle East . . . We can't solve other people's problems. What we do diplomatically is either act as honest brokers or as the catalyst or a force that makes people get together.

Ultimately, when there is not a communist threat, it's harder for people to understand what the stakes in any diplomatic issue are. But I do think our diplomacy is working very creatively to try to resolve conflicts that basically have been endemic, and try to bring the parties together.

There's no doubt about the fact that diplomacy and goals of foreign policy are less clear now than they were for 50 years. The world was divided between ``Red'' and ``Red, White and Blue.'' We lined everything up on either side of it.

I know that everybody gets tired of hearing how complicated things are, but they are really different. And I think that requires a different kind of diplomacy, and a different kind of working with allies. And we're going through that process.

Q. Do you think America should be a leader no matter what, even if our immediate interests are not at stake?

A. I've talked about our interests as three concentric circles.

I believe that in the inner circle - where America has to do what we have to do - is where our vital national interests are concerned. And that has to do with protecting our territory, our citizens, our economic well-being and our closest allies, and making sure that nuclear weapons do not proliferate. There, I think there's no choice - the U.S. has to lead. It affects us. We have to act unilaterally if we can't get others to go along.

Then there's a second circle of interests that are really a recognition of the interdependence of the world. Our citizens don't sit still; they travel and they invest abroad. Our territory to some extent is affected by issues - whether pollution or drugs, etc. - that are not protected by the two oceans.

And the regional conflicts that are out there are the kind that concern us because they might spread. And then there are genuine humanitarian issues where Americans are appalled if they see hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered.

In that second circle, we are more likely to act with others. That's where organizations such as the U.N. and NATO come in, where we, in effect, take part to the extent that our national interest is concerned. That's why we think the U.N. is important, because it helps us share the burden and share the risk. We can't do everything. We shouldn't do everything.

And then in the third circle are these new issues that really are global, that must be dealt with by other countries. No matter how strong the United States is, if the ozone layer has a hole in it there's nothing we can do about it alone. Or disease. Those are the kinds of issues that are multilateral, whether people like the word or not.

U.S. leadership is required everywhere. The amount of our commitment in those circles differs according to our interest.

Q. In the first presidential debate, Bob Dole seemed to hit strongly at the idea of being the world's policeman. Is that what you're talking about?

A. No, not at all. I think that we must lead, but we can't do everything.

There are people who are looking at a false choice: Those who say we're the global cop and we have to be responsible for everything, or those who say we're not going to get involved in anything. Both are equally untenable.

What we're doing is choosing and calibrating where we're involved, with what level and what force, depending upon how important we think it is to our vital national security.

But what I've found, which is very interesting, is that Americans do not like it when hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered. And they want to do something, but they don't want to do it alone.

We are the indispensable nation. They just don't function without us.

Q. But Americans seemed to be hesitant about Bosnia. There were news reports all the time, but no outcry that America should get involved by going in there and bombing them.

A. There were mixed reactions to it. I think there were quite a few Americans who believed that if we used force early and bombed certain strategic areas, that this could have been dealt with earlier, and that we should have taken care of it, and that Europeans couldn't figure out how to do it.

Then there were those who were appalled (at the human toll). There was an outpouring of desire for us to do something. I don't think a lot of Americans saw that as a long-term commitment, and we haven't made a long-term commitment. What we have done is choose the intensity and length of commitment depending upon where our national interests are.

I will happily agree to the fact that it's harder today to make it clear to people what it is they're fighting. Because it isn't Joe Stalin or Hitler. It's more complicated. People are very willing to fight Saddam Hussein because there's an evil image out there. What is more complicated now is that the threats don't often have faces attached to them, and so it's harder to explain.

I don't want you to misunderstand me in terms of American leadership. I do believe that this is a special nation. And I do believe that people care about seeing America lead. But I also do not think that the United States can do everything alone, nor should it.

And that's why I happen to think that either through the U.N. or NATO or other organizations, it's a way for us to deal with what is viewed as the responsibility of being the only superpower - and to share the risk and share the burden. As far as the U.N. is concerned: Have other countries be peacekeepers and we just supply what we're best at, which is logistics.

But the U.S. cannot be, and shouldn't be, the global policeman.

Q. Warren Christopher, a respected Los Angeles attorney before he became secretary of state, seems to be offering a different style of diplomatic leadership. He's not leading from the front, but instead he seems more comfortable leading by guiding people behind the scenes. Have people misinterpreted that style as indecisiveness? And has his leadership style resulted in a difficulty in articulating the administration's policy on issues?

A. I'm not sure I agree with all the characterizations, but let me just pursue it from my own angle: I think that there is no doubt about the fact that with the end of the Cold War, there has to have been a reconfiguration of the way we do foreign policy.

For 50 years, the only national security policy we had was dealing with communists. It's very interesting, if you look at all the parts of foreign policy, every part of it somehow was dealing with communists - whether it was our aid programs, where we gave aid to countries that we were trying to seduce to be on our side; our public diplomacy was involved with it; our private diplomacy was involved with it; our defense machinery, every part of it, was focused on it. And with that gone, you needed a different approach.

I think Secretary Christopher's approach is, he's a problem solver. And I think he's a terrific secretary of state. He is principled and thoughtful and not somebody who's got his ego involved in things. And he does believe in American leadership. But he's not a bully. Those of us who work with him see him as very steady, fair and principled, and with a determination to get a problem solved. He's not a showboat. He's someone who really works an issue.

Q. Does the United States have a favorite candidate to succeed Boutros-Ghali as secretary-general?

A. We don't have a candidate. We are not trying to dominate the U.N.; we are trying to get a process going.

Q. What exactly is the reason for the U.S. dissatisfaction with Boutros-Ghali?

A. We are pushing an agenda of reform. The secretariat itself got to elephantine proportions during the period of the Cold War, and it just doesn't work. It's just overgrown.

We believe that at this stage of history, you need a secretary-general that goes back to the original model of being a chief administrator, a chief executive officer of the U.N. who makes the system work.

Boutros-Ghali was elected in 1991 as a compromise candidate. The previous administration supported him, and did it on the basis of the fact that he said he would be a one-term secretary-general. They believed that if he had one term, that he would make all the tough decisions in term of a reform agenda.

That is not where Boutros-Ghali's head is. He's a terrific person, he's been very good to the United States, he's an international statesman - we respect him. This is not a decision we came to easily. But it's one we came to because we support the U.N., and not the other way around.

Q. Does this have anything to do with the criticism directed toward the United States, that we're not paying our U.N. dues?

A. No. Let me state it in a different way: We are in a very peculiar position at the U.N.

We are supposed to pay the greatest proportion of the U.N. regular and peacekeeping budget. At the same time, we are the greatest debtor and the greatest contributor to the U.N. So even as we are not paying, we are paying more than anybody else is.

We're still paying a lot of money. We owe $950 million, but we are paying.

Q. In addition to that, the United States seems to shoulder a huge share of the burden and the blame during and after international crisis situations. Must it be that way?

A. What I have found is that the price of leadership is that you have to have a thick skin. People want us to lead, and then we do lead, they say: ``Why are you doing that?''

If we don't lead, it doesn't happen. It's become clear to me that the world cannot function without U.S. leadership.

There may be grousing about it when we lead, but it can't function without it. It goes with the territory. So that's where we are.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) U.S. can't do everything alone, says U .N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright.

Tom Jagoe/Daily News

(2) U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright addresses members of the Security Council in connection with a plot to kill former President Bush.

Associated Press