The Pinochet case has not only aroused international passions and unleashed controversy, but taken on a direction and speed that few would have dared predict. London and Madrid have overcome powerful pressures upon them to shelve any action on this delicate matter... The Pinochet affair is doing more for international law than decades of conventions ignored by signatory governments. DIFFICULT TO find a more appropriate commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights than the British Home Secretary's decision to allow his country's courts to process Spain's request for the extradition of Pinochet. Whether he turns his zeal to a domestic agenda - a return, for instance, to his health programme or to race relations - or to the international arena, Bill Clinton will be back, a man - and a leader - to be reckoned with.. He will be a man in a hurry to make up for lost time, a man saved by God for great deeds, a man with a mission for his country and the world even more urgent than before. He thinks in its terms, and - while his prayer breakfast contrition was as staged as any of his apologies - his recruitment of clergy as counsellors and his reference in his first televised confession to his affair as "between me, the two people I love most, my wife and daughter, and our God" were not.Far from reconciling himself to being a lame-duck President, Bill Clinton will emerge from the Monica affair with a greater sense of purpose than before.

Far from deterring him, the violence in the region that has erupted in advance of his visit is a hardship sent by God. He is deliberately putting himself in harm's way: challenging God to preserve him for the work ahead.In a country where material things count for so much, it is easy for an outsider to be cynical about the religious aspect of American life and about Americans' church-going, especially the church-going of politicians But Bill Clinton's Southern fundamentalist roots run deep He speaks the language of that church. Afterwards, he offered a hint of his rationale: he saw the hardships and the sleepless nights as a physical and intellectual penance of a kind for his misdeeds, and he saw his success - however tenuous and short-lived it turned out to be - as approval of a kind, from God.It is possible to think of his trip to the Middle East this weekend - Jerusalem at Hanukkah, the first address by an American President to the Palestinian assembly - as another test. He has a legacy to bequeath, and that legacy must include something lasting that trumps the scandal, something that links his name for ever with something more than his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.There was a glimpse of the post-Monica Bill Clinton this autumn, in the week of the Middle East peace talks at Wye Plantation, when he persisted in arguing and cajoling far longer than most negotiators would have allowed, far longer than a world leader could usually afford. But he will also be even more determined and driven than he was at the start of his presidency. Last year's State of the Union message to Congress - just six days after the Monica revelations - was visibly a struggle, and he fluffed his lines.Thereafter, he took on a haggard, somewhat haunted look.

The fast-talking bluster was less evident; the lustrous confidence had faded. Caught off- guard, he could looked stooped, even cowed.This week, as the depth and duration of his shame are being determined, something of that look has returned But Bill Clinton will be back. He will be older and thinner than he was at the start of the year, wiser and more reflective. But once caught, he looks caught.For the best part of this year, between the time that he was first rumbled by the US media in January to the time that he admitted he had been found out (August) and discovered the political capital to be made of contrition (September, October and November), Bill Clinton was never quite his old confident self. In common with a good many of his predecessors, Bill Clinton could lie and did He will bluff and bluster to save his skin.

One reason perhaps why other statesmen find him so engaging and women - with the exception of Paula Jones - find his charm so devastating, is that he still conducts himself so often like a small boy. His response on being caught by the evidence of Monica's blue dress was that of a male child caught doing what he should not have done."I could not tell a lie" may have been the guilty admission of George Washington, the ethical standard on which the United States likes to think it was built, but those days are past, if indeed they ever existed. The unaccustomed hesitancy in his voice had gone; the washed-out haggardness of his visage was diminishing. Coming through once again were the steely determination and sense of mission that had brought him, in four-and-a-half decades, from the little town of Hope in the backwoods of Arkansas, to the White House.In good times and in bad, Bill Clinton's demeanour tells much - more, perhaps, than is good for a politician, still less a world leader. They could force an impeachment vote in the House, misread the mood, and lose - so letting Mr Clinton off scot-free. Or they could win that vote and force a Senate trial, which would extend the agony for a few weeks and months, but have the same result. An act of God apart, all that can now prevent Bill Clinton from completing his term is a decision on his part to do the decent thing and resign - which seems as remote a prospect now as it ever was.For until the temporary setback of the past week, when the leaderless Republican majority on the House judiciary committee decided to go for broke and push the impeachment process as far as it could go, Mr Clinton was clawing his way back.