Word: annans
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...persuade Americans to grind up their children in a world that seems filled with endless hate? Annan believes it is all about leadership, about explaining how seeing a crime obligates us to prevent others if we can. He won't bash Clinton directly, but he suggests much of the killing that has gone on in the past decade could have been prevented by stronger U.S. leadership. "Bush had no problem in the Gulf--a vital national interest was at stake there--but he had no problem in Somalia either," Annan says. Courage, he believes, will always trump cowardice...
During a visit to East Timor last year, a man rushed up to Annan, burst into tears and began recounting everything that was happening. Annan--already overbooked and running late--stayed with him for more than an hour. In Kosovo he sat with a 100-year-old woman who could only say over and over again, "How could this happen to me at my age?" Annan is not a physically expansive man, but he held the woman's hand and listened without moving...
...Nane Annan--a slim, strikingly beautiful Swede--had been in love with Annan for a few months when the following happened: "We were walking along on Roosevelt Island [in New York City] one night, and Kofi saw a figure hunched over in a telephone booth. It was off to the side, maybe the kind of thing other people wouldn't notice. There was a young man sobbing in the booth. So Kofi went and talked to him and listened to his problem, something about his father. And for some time after that, we had this young man coming to visit...
...friend's party. Their marriage--16 years now--was a second marriage for both. He has two children, a son and a daughter, from his first. It is impossible if you are standing nearby to miss their deep affection. Stories of their romance charm New York's social world. Annan's friend Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., recalls a gala where, long after most guests had gone home, Kofi and Nane stayed out on the dance floor, dancing by themselves...
Nane is the niece of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and then disappeared after being captured by the Soviet army in 1945. "When you think of what he did, you ask yourself, 'But how come there were so few Raoul Wallenbergs?'" Annan says. "When you talk to his sister--my mother-in-law--she says he was not a daredevil but a very calm, gentle man. Yet he had a kind of inner strength that let him do what he needed to do to save people. But you ask yourself, 'There were...