A series of solemn ceremonies at Ground Zero in New York, the Pentagon and a crash site in Pennsylvania were held yesterday amid an unusually tense ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In sunny New York, US Vice President Joseph Biden and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were among those attending the annual ritual of reading the names of all 2,752 people killed when two hijacked airliners destroyed the Twin Towers.
The ceremony started with the national anthem sung by a youth choir at Ground Zero, where reconstruction work has recently for the first time begun to gather pace. Bereaved relatives held up portraits of their lost loved ones under a perfectly clear sky.
PHOTO: AFP
US President Barack Obama was to attend a ceremony at the Pentagon outside Washington, which was also hit by a hijacked airliner in the attack by Islamist militants.
A third ceremony took place in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the fourth plane seized by the attackers crashed in a field, bringing the total killed to almost 3,000.
Usually a day of carefully choreographed respect, this year's 9/11 anniversary has been marred by polarizing debates over a planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero and a Florida pastor's threat to publicly burn the Koran.
Obama, who has forcefully defended the community center plan, pleaded in his weekly radio address for unity.
“This is a time of difficulty for our country. And it is often in such moments that some try to stoke bitterness — to divide us based on our differences, to blind us to what we have in common,” Obama said.
The firebrand pastor Terry Jones arrived in New York late on Friday to continue publicizing his campaign, which has already sparked protests across the Muslim world, while rival street rallies were planned near the controversial project site.
However, he said yesterday his church would never burn the Koran, as he had previously threatened, in an interview on NBC television.
“We will definitely not burn the Koran, no,” Jones said on the Today show.
“Not today, not ever,” he said after being pressed on whether his Gainesville, Florida, church would carry out the burning at a later date in response to plans to build the community center near Ground Zero.
Jones earlier said he was flying to New York where he planned to meet with imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim preacher behind plans for the Islamic center, but he told the Today show no such meeting had been set up.
On Thursday, Jones suspended his plans to burn copies of the Koran after saying he had received a pledge that the Islamic center would be moved elsewhere.
Abdul Rauf and others involved in the cultural center said they had made no deal and had not arranged a meeting with Jones.
Demonstrators supporting the right of Muslims to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero said late on Friday that Muslims across the US were being demonized over the nearly decade-old 9/11 attacks.
“We stand together to rebuff the stereotypes,” Susan Lerner, New York director of the rights group Common Cause, told the crowd. “We reject the idea that any neighborhood in our great city is off limits to any particular group.”
Demonstrators against the community center, led by ultra-conservative groups, predicted a large protest later yesterday.
Some protesters accuse the Islamic center of aiming to honor the 9/11 terrorists and argue that Muslims should not be allowed a significant presence anywhere near Ground Zero.
Others say that the feelings of families of those killed on 9/11 are still too raw to accept the project.
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