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Albright is privately livid over the threat. Telling a President he can't negotiate a treaty crosses a constitutional line, she feels. But if Clinton wants any trophy out of Moscow, he will first have to get it past Helms. "Right now," says John Bolton, senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, "he's as powerful as J. William Fulbright," who headed the committee at the height of the Vietnam War.

Fulbright would roll over in his grave at the comparison. The Foreign Relations Committee is only a shell of what it was when the influential Arkansas Democrat was its chairman from 1959 to 1974. "The dirty little secret is they don't do very much now," says a senior Administration aide. Helms sticks to a few cold war issues like Russia and China and lets the panel's younger Republicans lead hearings on other subjects. But Helms' committee still approves State Department nominees and treaties, a power he has used in a masterly way to become a de facto Foreign Minister.

Clinton nominees quickly learned Helms' soft spots. "If you're ever being confirmed by Jesse Helms, always refer to your dead parents in your opening statement or have your kids at the hearing," says a former Helms aide. Albright won him over with stories about fleeing communism as a child and rearing three daughters as a single mom. "She's a classy lady," Helms still says. During his successful confirmation last summer, U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke introduced his mother, then tearfully wished his dead father could have been there.

This White House has found that Helms can be cultivated, but it has to be done as carefully as growing a prizewinning rose. Joe Biden of Delaware, the committee's savvy senior Democrat, last year got Helms to agree to allow the U.S. to pay $926 million of its arrears to the U.N., an organization Helms has reviled. But there was a catch: Helms insisted on U.N. policy changes that are still holding up the bulk of the payments. Before Holbrooke was sworn in, Helms asked the White House to appoint an alternate U.N. delegate: Irwin Belk, a feisty North Carolina buddy who heads a department-store chain. Clinton agreed, and Belk, who turned out to be a U.N. cheerleader, quickly became, as a top Administration aide chortles, a "national asset."

Belk talked Helms into delivering a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 20, a first for the Senator and the council. The next night Belk was host of a dinner for Helms with 130 of the U.N.'s diplomatic elite at the posh Metropolitan Club.

The cease-fire had begun. Helms reciprocated by inviting the Security Council representatives to the U.S. Capitol this spring. The 15 ambassadors sat politely as Helms delivered a civics lecture on Congress's role in U.S. foreign policy. Some doodled on notepads, but the Senator was glowing. "I think Jesse has decided he doesn't want his legacy just being obstruction," Biden suggests. After council president Anwarul Karim Chowdhury of Bangladesh larded him with praise, Helms buttonholed Holbrooke: "If Bangladesh wants anything from me, they can have it."