ANCIENT OLYMPIA (Greece), Nov 19: Overcast skies Monday prevented the lighting of the Olympic Flame from the sun’s rays ahead of the Salt Lake City Winter Games and the attacks on the United States added to the gloom.

Greek and US officials paid tribute to the victims of the Sept 11 attacks and appealed for world peace while a white-robed “priestess” used a flame lit during a weekend rehearsal to ignite the Olympic torch.

“Today, more than ever before, at a time when humanity is shaken by tragic events, we hope that the message conveyed by the Olympic Flame may find staunch supporters during its long journey from Ancient Olympia to Salt Lake City,” said Greek Olympic Committee president Lambis Nikolaou.

Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake City organising committee, paid tribute to the origins of the Games, saying people should not forget the ideals of their forefathers.

“Our city and yours are amost half a planet apart. As we now stand together in your land, we celebrate our common heritage,” he said. “May our symbolic return to this place turn our hearts to the vision of our earliest mothers and fathers.”

The Salt Lake Games open on February 8. High priestess Thalia Prokopiou, followed by her acolytes, carried a flaming cauldron out of the ruins of a Greek temple in Ancient Olympia, where the Games began 2,700 years ago.

Hundreds of tourists watched the ceremony near the ancient stadium, said to have been measured by Hercules himself. The flame ceremony was first held for the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

“It’s a lifetime experience, we really wanted to see it,” said Noel Walker from Michigan, visiting Greece with his wife and two children.

The flame will be carried through Greece to Athens, where it will be handed to Salt Lake City officials on December 3. The icicle-like, glass and metal torch will then be flown to Atlanta to begin its U.S. journey on December 4, much of it by rail.

A 19-car Olympic Torch Relay train will carry the flame more than 5,000 km (3,200 miles) across 11 states on its 65-day course.

“(It will travel) trough Washington D.C., Pennsylvania and New York in tribute to fallen citizens of the world, many redifining heroism for me and my countrymen,” Romney said.

It will finally ignite the cauldron at Salt Lake City, launching the 2002 Winter Games, on February 8.

The International Olympic Committee has vowed security will be unprecendented during the Games, the first after the plane suicide attacks in New York and Washington that killed more than 4,000 people.—Reuters