Albright Says Iraq Encouraged Iran and N. Korea
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
MOSCOW – A former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, criticized the American invasion of Iraq, saying yesterday that it had encouraged Iran and North Korea to push ahead with their nuclear programs.
Ms. Albright, who served under President Clinton, said, “The message out of Iraq is the wrong one.”
“The message out of Iraq is that if you don’t have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do have nuclear weapons, you don’t get invaded,” she said after an investors’ conference in Moscow.
Ms. Albright visited North Korea in October 2000, becoming the highest-level American official ever to travel to the country. The two nations do not have formal diplomatic relations.
Ms. Albright also said Russia did not deserve membership in the Group of Eight industrialized nations because it did not meet all the requirements.
“In terms of some criteria on open society, democracy, there are more and more questions, frankly,” she said.
