Clinton: fall from grace and back again

Taking a deeper look into American President Bill Clinton's fluctuating fortunes, Priyantha has predicted a fall from grace and loss of high office within the next year.

He has predicted that 1998 would alter the President's life, and political pitfalls will be aplenty. His political life and marriage both would be doomed, with separation from loved ones being indicated, Priyantha says.

He has predicted that Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe on 19 th August, 1946 would find life a mixed bag next year. As his secondary number is 1, he has tremendous zeal and leadership qualities. He is determined, powerful and proud.

The numerological value of his first name William is 7, making him spiritually motivated. This number being a spiritual number, he has divine forces backing him.

But the numerological value of his second name Jefferson is unfortunate, for it adds up to 8.

President Clinton has 2 as his Fadic number, which makes him creative, patient and blessed with inner strength. He is a passionate lover, and has diplomatic and organizational skills.

1999 is extremely bad for him in every way, but 2001 would see fortunes improving. He might regain some of his past glory in 2004 when he might make a positive come-back to politics. Priyantha says.

First Lady of the World

James Bone talks to the wife of the UN leader who negotiated a peace deal with Saddam

As her husband met President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Nane Annan was revisiting St Patrick's Cathedral in New York to pray for the success of his mission. Just a week earlier, Cardinal John O'Connor had appealed to the United Nations Secretary-General from the pulpit during the Sunday service to help to avert the looming war. Kofi Annan had shouldered his responsibilities and flown to Iraq, but this time his wife had to stay at home alone.

"He is a person who does not contemplate failure," the bashful Mrs. Annan told me as we sat in the oak-panelled library of the Secretary-General's official residence in Manhattan. "I am a bit more superstitious. In this case, it was so important that I just wanted to be part of the wall of support that would carry him. Part of that was going back to the cathedral and just sitting praying for him."

For the "First Lady of the World" it was a nerve-racking weekend. She did manage to slip out to visit an art fair on nearby Park Avenue with friends, but she spent the rest of the time following her husband's progress half a world away on live television.

When he arrived back in New York, she rushed to meet him at the airport and drove in with him to UN headquarters. Television viewers around the globe saw her at his side as he was given a hero's welcome by rapturous UN staff. At one point, she leant across in front of the cameras and straightened the "dove of peace" he had pinned to his lapel. At this crucial moment in his lifelong UN career, she did not want the dove to be flying upside down.

A Swede with Ingrid Bergman beauty and the same easy grace as her husband, Mrs. Annan, 53, is a reluctant celebrity. The day Mr. Annan was elected to run the UN at the end of 1996, I suggested that she could now become the Hillary Clinton of the world organization. She recoiled in outright horror, shocked that she might ever be seen as the power behind her husband's new throne. She has subsequently met her counterpart in the White House. Both lawyers by training, they hit it off so well that Mrs. Clinton suggested they make public appearances together. So far, however, Mrs. Annan has not taken up the offer.

In fact, Mrs. Annan, who abandoned her legal career a decade ago to become a painter, is still a little queasy about her new role as a UN Secretary-General's wife. Married in 1981, when both worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Annans used to live in the relative obscurity of a housing estate on Roosevelt Island, which lies in the river that runs alongside Manhattan. Now, home is a grand mansion on Manhattan's exclusive Sutton Place, donated to the UN by the family of the banker J.P. Morgan, and the couple have a half-acre garden overlooking the river.

"When we lived on Roosevelt Island we had a great view of Manhattan," she observes as the looks at the panoramic view from the window. "Now we have a great view of Roosevelt Island. I see the red bus I used to take. I have to pinch myself about the life I am living." So modest that she seldom meets the press, preferring instead to answer questions in writing. Mrs. Annan calls herself the "best known unknown artist in the world".

She comes from a distinguished lineage that suits her well to the diplomatic life. Her father, Gunnar Lagergren, was a prominent international jurist who helped to settle boundary disputes between India and Pakistan, served as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights and acted as the first president of the US-Iran claims tribunal. Though born in Stockholm, she grew up in such exotic locales as Morocco, Algeria, Tanzania and Italy.

Her mother, Nina Lagergren (nee von Dardel) was the half-sister of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis at the end of the Second World War before disappearing as a prisoner of victorious Soviet forces. Wllenberg's last known letter home arrived shortly after Nane was born in 1944 and requested; "Kiss the little one for me," It is Mrs. Annan's mother who now leads the long-running campaign to learn the truth about the legendary diplomat's fate.

Last year Mrs. Annan herself attended the unveiling of a statue of Wallenberg at the West Marble Arch synagogue in the West End of London. Despite information that he died in a Soviet prison camp shortly after the war, Mrs. Annan insists the family would not accept a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize because, until proven otherwise, they consider him still alive.

Mrs. Annan followed her father into the law. She became an assistant judge in Sweden, worked as a legal expert for various Swedish government commissions, then joined the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Her first marriage produced one daughter, Nina, now 26, who also became a lawyer. (Mr. Annan has two children from his first marriage: Ama, 27, and Kojo, 24.) After remarrying to Mr. Annan, however, she started painting full-time, first at New York's renowned Art Students League and then at the Studio School in Greenwich Village. Perhaps predictably, her work bears the stamp of brooding Scandinavian Expressionism and she has what she calls a "northern palette".

While her husband was the head of UN peacekeeping, she painted large canvases of fallen bodies and motorcycles - which she later understood as symbols not just of power but of violence. Now she focuses on the human face and, when she gets time to squirrel herself away in her room on the top floor, paints in a much smaller format.

Hanging over her head as we talk is an untitled oil of a brown body slumped in the corner of a room, with heavy, moody brushwork. It is the only piece by her on display in the public quarters on the first floor of the four-storey mansion. The rest of the artwork is either on loan, like the Matisse over the mantelpiece, from a local museum, or comes from Africa, like the brightly coloured kente cloth handing over the grand staircase, which was once worn by Mr. Annan's father. Mrs. Annan insists her work was "on display" to cover a hole in the wall.

Mr. Annan was the first career UN official ever to become Secretary-General, and his promotion took the couple by surprise. On the day she learnt he would be chosen as UN chief, Mrs. Annan found herself at a restaurant on the other side of Manhattan from UN headquarters and decided to walk all the way back, relishing her last moments without a constant guard.

These days, their favourite relaxation is to go walking in Central Park. Mrs. Annan admits to walking fast, but even she cannot keep up with the beetling UN chief.

Since Mr. Annan took office, Mrs. Annan has tried to find her role as a diplomat's wife. She has been with him on trips as far afield as Iran and Angola, organizing her own programme of visits to women's groups and UN field offices. But she admits she also has a personal motivation.

"What happened was I followed him on his trips because I wanted to be with him because he is the person I love. It's what I ought to do. For me, the aeroplane is luxury time because I can sit next to him for eight hours."

- The Times, London

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