Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II challenged the UN to fight global dangers by “waging” peace, then visited “Ground Zero” to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Back in New York after more than three decades, the 84-year-old British monarch turned her eyes toward the future of the World Trade Center — new skyscrapers rising over what was once smoldering debris that had buried loved ones forever.
PHOTO: AFP
“We are not here to reminisce,” she told the world body earlier on Tuesday. “In tomorrow’s world, we must all work together as hard as ever if we are truly to be United Nations.”
Not even a record-high temperature of 30°C, accompanied by a heat advisory, kept the monarch from New York’s hallowed ground.
She arrived at the 6.5 hectare site in lower Manhattan late on Tuesday afternoon with her husband, Prince Philip. They walked slowly across a wooden walkway that reaches deep over the construction site. Huge cranes hovering overhead were stopped and workers took a break during the queen’s visit.
In silence, Elizabeth laid a wreath of flowers on an iron pedestal near the footprint of the trade center’s south tower.
Bowing her head, she gently brushed her gloved hand against the locally grown red peonies, roses, lilies, black-eyed Susans and other summer blossoms.
Then the queen met dozens of family members and first responders who had lost loved ones when the twin towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The queen just was asking me about that day and how awful it must’ve been,” said Debbie Palmer, whose husband, battalion Fire Chief Orio Palmer, was killed. “She said: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in my life as bad as that.’ And I said: ‘Let’s hope we never do again.’”
Palmer said of the monarch: “She’s beautiful. She looks like she could be anybody’s grandmother.”
The queen wore a two-piece white, blue and beige print dress with long sleeves and a matching brimmed champagne-colored silk hat with flowers.
While there were “waterfalls coming down my body, there was not a drop of sweat on her face. I don’t think royalty sweats,” joked Nile Berry, 17, son of securities analyst David Berry, who died in the south tower, leaving behind three children.
“I think she understood” the significance of meeting victims’ relatives, Nile said, adding that it would take him a while to “digest” that he had met the queen.
Elizabeth left the site in a motorcade to tour the British Garden of Remembrance, built to honor the 67 Britons killed in the attack.
She met their families there, joining them for a ceremony.
Earlier on Tuesday, Elizabeth’s familiar formality graced the lectern at the United Nations, where she urged the world body to spearhead an international response to global dangers, while promoting prosperity and dignity for the world’s inhabitants.
“It has perhaps always been the case that the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership of all,” she said, while praising the UN for promoting peace and justice.
Speaking as queen of 16 UN member states and head of a commonwealth of 54 countries with a population of nearly 2 billion people, the queen recalled the dramatic changes in the world since she last visited the UN in 1957, especially in science, technology and social attitudes.
“In my lifetime, the United Nations has moved from being a high-minded aspiration to being a real force for common good,” Elizabeth told diplomats from the 192 UN member states. “That of itself has been a signal achievement.”
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