NEW YORK, Dec 23: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose composure and compassion rallied New York and America after the Sep. 11 attacks, was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year on Sunday.

“This was about Sept 11 and about how in the immediate aftermath of the attacks in those crucial hours, one person took emotional charge in a way that was extraordinary,” Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly told Reuters.

“He led by emotion, not just by words and actions, and in an emotional year like this one, he deserved to be person of the year,” Kelly said.

Giuliani, who is in the final days of his eight years as mayor of the United States’ largest city, is Time Magazine’s 76th Person of the Year. “The person who most affected the news or our lives, for good or for ill, this year,” said Time founder Henry Luce when he instituted in 1925 what has now become a national talking point each year.

President George W. Bush, Time’s 75th Person of the Year, made it to the short list again, along with America’s most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden.

“This was an active decision about picking Giuliani, and not a decision about not picking Bush,” Kelly said.

“Giuliani managed to touch us emotionally in a way that nobody else did, including the president,” he said.

As for Osama, Time said he “is too small a man to get the credit for all that has happened in America in the autumn of 2001.”

“He’s a moral pipsqueak,” Kelly said.

He said after that viewing the videotape released last week showing bin Laden pleased that the Sept. 11 attacks succeeded beyond his expectations, bin Laden was not a figure

with broad enough historical sweep to name as person of the year.—Reuters