Jeane Kirkpatrick, who died on Thursday at the age of 80, was the first woman ever to become US ambassador to the United Nations and was considered an icon by the neoconservative movement that came to dominate US foreign policy during the current Bush administration.

She also earned a degree of enmity across the Atlantic for her open sympathy, shared by then secretary of state Alexander Haig, with Argentina during the 1982 Falkland Islands war with Britain. She felt that anti-communist regimes, such as the Buenos Aires junta headed by General Leopold Galtieri, deserved support whenever possible.