ALBRIGHT TABBED AS SECRETARY OF STATE : CLINTON MAKES HISTORY IN SELECTION OF WOMAN.

Byline: Alison Mitchell The New York Times

President Clinton announced his selection of Madeleine Albright to be secretary of state Thursday as he introduced a national security team for his second term that also includes a prominent Republican to head the Defense Department.

Albright, 59, the daughter of a Czechoslovak diplomat, would be the first woman ever to serve at the helm of the State Department.

As chief delegate to the United Nations, she has evolved into one of the most outspoken and visible members of Clinton's foreign policy team, having consistently pushed the White House toward a forceful military response to the Serbs in Bosnia, for instance.

For secretary of defense, the president chose William Cohen, a Maine Republican who is retiring from the Senate. Cohen, 56, is a moderate with expertise in intelligence and defense issues.

The president also named his national security adviser, Anthony Lake, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Samuel Berger, Lake's deputy, will succeed him at the National Security Council.

``These new people who will form the national security team, they have the experience, the judgment, the vision to meet the heavy responsibility and the high privilege of leadership,'' Clinton said in announcing his nominations in the Oval Office. He said the group would help assure that ``America remains the indispensable nation, the world's greatest force for peace.''

All the selections, except Berger's, the immediate reaction from members of Congress seemed to presage smooth approval.

Even Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has been a frequent opponent of the president's policies, praised the choices.

``I believe it is a certainty,'' Helms said, ``that all four of the nominees announced today by the president will be viewed favorably by most senators.''

Clinton's selection of Albright had the bold stroke of making history, naming a woman for a job long considered a male preserve of the Washington power elite. With the secretary of state fourth in line of presidential succession, Albright would become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the federal government.

The selection of Cohen, like that of Albright, was politically significant, making good on Clinton's promise to govern from the ``vital center'' and reach out to the Republicans in Congress by putting members of their party in his administration.

In terms of foreign policy, however, Clinton followed a safe path, choosing to reshuffle key members of the team he used to mixed effect during his first term. Experts in foreign policy said this was a group of officials better known for pragmatism than for strategic vision. They are also given high marks for political skills and for their loyalty to the president.

``It's not an ideological group,'' said Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. ``It's a bunch of pros on policy and politics. Their first task ought to be to help the president define a real agenda for the next four years.''

Richard Haass, the director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, said: ``You don't have any person particularly associated with any approach or doctrine. What you have are in some ways the various tendencies that competed in the first Clinton administration.''

Still, both Albright and Berger are expected to be better at publicly articulating foreign policy than were their predecessors: the courtly Warren Christopher at the State Department and the self-effacing Lake at the National Security Council.

And Albright - who fled Czechoslovakia twice as a child, first when the Nazis invaded and then when the Communists took over - has generally been more assertive in advocating the use of American force as a tool of diplomacy.

In the first Clinton term, she consistently argued for a military response in Bosnia. Along with Gen. John Shalikashvili, who will remain chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, she pushed the administration away from the doctrine of the former chairman, Gen. Colin Powell, who favored military intervention only when vital national interests were at stake and domestic political support was unwavering.

As a strong proponent of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Albright is expected to be a reassuring choice to the Central Europeans. Further, she announced Thursday that she plans to keep in place Strobe Talbott, a longtime friend of Clinton and an expert on Russia, as the deputy secretary of state.

Less certain is how she will handle Asian-Pacific and economic issues.

At the very first transition meeting, even before Clinton's re-election last month, his senior advisers talked with him about the possibility of pairing Albright at the State Department and Cohen at Defense.

But it was not until late Wednesday night, after other candidates had risen and fallen and the president had considered an array of combinations, that he summoned his chief of staff, Leon Panetta, to the White House kitchen to tell him of the decision.

George Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic leader, had once been the front-runner for secretary of state, but lost luster, aides said, when congressional Republicans described him as too partisan. Richard Holbrooke, former assistant secretary of state, who negotiated the Bosnia peace accords in Dayton, Ohio, was considered a visionary with potential for brilliance but also for controversy. Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., was among others considered for defense secretary.

But Clinton, his advisers say, was looking for teamwork and continuity. He used the word ``team'' repeatedly Thursday, as did his nominees. And ultimately he considered Albright and Cohen the right combination, particularly because he thought they could sell a bipartisan foreign policy to Republicans on Capitol Hill and persuade them to put money into diplomacy.

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

PHOTO (1) Anthony Lake, selected to head the Central Intelligence Agency, hugs President Clinton's choice for secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, as Vice President Al Gore applauds Thursday.

Associated Press

(2 -- color) ALBRIGHT

(3 -- color) COHEN

(4) Lake

(5) Berger