Washington, March 24 (IANS) Madeleine Albright, the first female United States Secretary of State, has died, her family has announced. She was 84 years old.

Albright died of cancer, her family said in a statement Wednesday, adding that she was “surrounded by family and friends” during the last moment of her life, Xinhua news agency reported.

Originally from Prague and then Czechoslovakia, she emigrated to the United States in 1948 as an 11-year-old refugee, reaching the pinnacle of the American Foreign Service as she served as Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 under the Bill Clinton administration. .

During her tenure at the State Department, she championed the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pushing in particular for the alliance’s military intervention – directed by the United States in 1999 – in the conflict in Kosovo between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

NATO’s 78-day airstrike campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has extended to the bombardment of the capital Belgrade.

Prior to becoming Secretary of State, Albright served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations between 1993 and 1997. She was a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University at the time of her death.

–IANS

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