Jeane J Kirkpatrick, a political science professor whose support for Ronald Reagan conservatism catapulted her into the post of United States ambassador to the United Nations, has died at 80. She was the first woman to hold the post.
Initially a liberal Democrat, Kirkpatrick championed human rights, opposed Soviet Union communism and supported Israel.
“She defended the cause of freedom at a pivotal time in world history,” President George Bush said on Friday. “Jeane’s powerful intellect helped America win the Cold War.”
Kirkpatrick’s son, Stuart, said she died on Thursday December 7 at her suburban home, where she was under hospice care. The cause of death was not immediately known. UN ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence for her at a meeting of the US delegation to the UN in New York.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan praised “her commitment to an effective United Nations” and said Kirkpatrick was “always ardent and often provocative”.
Kirkpatrick’s health had been in decline recently, her assistant, Andrea Harrington, said, adding that she had been going to work about once a week “and then less and less”.
Kirkpatrick “helped change the course of history and bring down the Soviet Union”, former representative Jack Kemp said on CNN television.
“She was a great believer in civil rights,” Kemp said. “She was a great fan of Dr Martin Luther King.”
Named to the UN post by Reagan in 1981, Kirkpatrick was known as a blunt advocate. She remained involved in public issues after leaving the government two decades ago.
She joined seven other former UN ambassadors in a letter advising Congress that a plan to withhold US dues to force reform at the UN was misguided and would “create resentment, build animosity and actually strengthen opponents of reform”.
Kirkpatrick was a political science professor at Georgetown University from 1957 until her appointment as UN ambassador.
In a pivotal article in Commentary Magazine, she sought to draw a distinction between authoritarian governments and more extreme violators of human rights like the Soviet Union. She acknowledged that authoritarian states did not meet democratic standards but wrote that they were far preferable to totalitarian regimes.
In the Reagan years she played a quiet role in cutting off US aid to a leftist government in Nicaragua and supporting a military junta in El Salvador.
One of her more riveting moments at the UN occurred in September 1983 when she commissioned an audiovisual presentation there of the Soviet downing of a South Korean passenger plane, KAL007, that had strayed into Soviet airspace. All 269 persons aboard died.
Alvin A Snyder, producer of the video, revealed in 1996 that unedited versions of the tape disclosed that the Soviets thought the aircraft was an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane.
Her support for Israel, particularly at the UN where the Jewish state often is denounced, was steadfast.
In 2002, at a seminar in Washington sponsored by the Zionist Organisation of America, Kirkpatrick said a Palestinian state would be “a catastrophic mistake” and a danger to Israel. It would be appeasement, Kirkpatrick argued, and a step backward from the US fight against terrorism.
Kirkpatrick once referred to herself as a “lifelong Democrat”. She actually switched to the Republican party in early 1985, four years after Reagan sent her to New York for the UN job. She took with her a reputation as a hard-liner on foreign policy.
Because of this, she often was a lightning rod for the opposition.
In some respects, she shared Bolton’s controversial profile. Bolton recently said he would resign when it became clear the Senate would not approve him full-time as UN ambassador.
Describing his work with Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute, where she had been a senior fellow, Bolton told reporters on Friday: “When I was at AEI in the late Nineties, for most of that time our offices were right next to each other and …”
His voice then broke, and, near tears, he closed his eyes briefly, cleared his throat and continued in a quavering voice, “I benefited very greatly. It really is very sad for America, but she will be greatly missed.” — Sapa-AP
Associated Press reporters Edith M Lederer, Merrill Hartson, George Gedda and Pam Dockins contributed to this story