AT HEARING, ALBRIGHT TEMPERS TOUGH TALK WITH COOPERATION VOW.

Byline: Steven Thomma Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

With a combination of tough talk for enemies of the United States and promises of cooperation with Republicans, Madeleine Albright on Wednesday appeared headed toward rapid Senate confirmation as the country's first woman secretary of state.

``I'm going to tell it like it is here, and I'm going to tell it like it is when I go abroad,'' the 59-year-old ambassador to the United Nations told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who are expected to recommend that the Senate confirm her appointment.

She promised an aggressive foreign policy to fight against illegal drugs,

terrorism, human rights abuses and environmental threats, and for an expansion of NATO and trade agreements that would help U.S. jobs.

``To defeat the dangers and seize the opportunities, we must be more than audience, more even than actors, we must be the authors of the history of our age,'' she said.

Her likely confirmation assures Albright herself a place in history as the highest-ranking woman ever in the U.S. government.

``I feel a great sense of pride,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. ``It is one more door opened. It is one more door that will not be closed.'' With her three daughters seated behind her, Albright told the committee that she once thought she could never reach such high office - not because she was a woman, but because she only came to the United States at the age of 11 after her family fled from Europe.

``I did not think it was possible,'' she said. ``My ambition at that time was only to speak English well, please my parents, study hard and grow up to be an American.''

She called herself the ``embodiment of the turbulence of the 20th century.''

Committee members from both parties frequently laced their questions with criticisms of Clinton administration foreign policy. Helms criticized foreign policy in Clinton's first term as ``too often vacillating and insecure, a foreign policy that has responded to world events rather than shaping them.''

He and other Republicans criticized the U.S. mission to Somalia that cost the lives of 18 Americans and the U.S. intervention in Haiti.

But even Republicans expressed their admiration for Albright, for her personal saga as a member of a family that fled both Hitler and Stalin, and for her cool condemnation of enemies such as Communist Cuba, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and international drug dealers.

Retiring Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who escorted Albright to the hearing, praised her ``plain spoken eloquence.'' The taciturn Christopher laughed at her past description of him as ``almost lifelike.''

Albright displayed her tendency for candor even before the hearing could start, quickly answering an outbreak from protesters complaining about the effect of international economic sanctions on Iraq and its children.

``Saddam Hussein is the one with the fate of his country in his hands,'' she said. ``He is the one responsible for the starving children of his country, not the United States.''

While she told committee members she deeply regretted the loss of American lives in Somalia, she did not back way from the prospect of using force again.

``Force, and the credible possibility of its use, are essential to keep America safe,'' she said.

Albright said she would recommend the use of military force only when the people, property or way of life of the U.S. or allies were threatened, when the action was supported by the people and the Congress, when there was a strong likelihood of victory, and a clear plan to get out.

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PHOTO Madeleine Albright

Expected to be confirmed