October 17, 2003	Friday	Sha'aban 20, 1424

PARIS, Oct 16: US President George Bush’s foreign policy “is not good for America, not good for the world”, Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state under Bill Clinton’s presidency, told French radio on Thursday.

In an interview with the Europe 1 station Madeleine Albright criticized the actions of the Republican leadership that replaced the Democratic administration she worked for, and notably the “chaos” that reigns in Iraq.

“America is much stronger in a multilateral system, we must be on the same side, work with other people in the world. It shouldn’t be America versus the others,” Ms Albright said, speaking in French.

“It’s difficult to be in France and criticise my government. But I’m doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world,” she said.

Madeleine Albright, who was US ambassador to the United Nations before becoming the first woman secretary of state in 1996, was in Paris to promote the French launch of her autobiography, “Madame Secretary: A Memoir”.

She said that UN chief Kofi Annan, who has come out against a US draft resolution on Iraq currently before the UN Security Council, was the “best secretary general since the creation” of the world body.

She added that France was “a little bit right” to oppose Washington’s go-it-alone stance, but she warned: “It’s method is not always the best.”—AFP