GLOBAL PANEL - PRESS RELEASES

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) _ Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the highest-ranking woman in American political history, received a warm welcome in her native Prague on Saturday along with an award for her years of public service.

The Prague Society for International Cooperation and the Global Panel Foundation presented Albright with their annual citizenship award for "international public service and understanding."

"Secretary Albright is an example of courage and self-sacrifice," the group's president, Marc S. Ellenbogen, said at the award ceremony.

Albright was born in Prague in 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia. Eleven years later, her family moved to the United States to escape the country's totalitarian communist regime.

"I'm so pleased to be back here and to have the opportunity to celebrate with one of the most remarkable people in the world," Albright said, referring to the country's respected president, Vaclav Havel and dignitaries who attended this the NATO summit here.

Seven former communist countries were issued invitations to join the military alliance at the historic summit, which Albright described as "a great tribute to him (Havel) and to the people of the Czech Republic." Havel, a former playwright and prominent dissident, was elected
president of Czechoslovakia in December 1989 when four decades of communist rule ended. When Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in January 1993, he became the president of the Czech Republic.

One of Albright's last acts as secretary of state under former U.S. President Bill Clinton was to urge the alliance to hold the summit in Prague. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999.

The society, whose honorary chairman is former South African President F.W. de Klerk, was established in 1999 to promote international cooperation in Central Europe.