COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, June 6: World leaders honoured on Sunday the thousands of Allied troops who fought and died in the D-Day landings in Normandy and vowed to safeguard the transatlantic alliance forged 60 years ago.
US President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, putting aside differences over the Iraq war, said modern leaders had a duty to honour what the soldiers died for by standing together in the cause of freedom and democracy.
"In the trials and that sacrifice of war we became inseparable allies," Bush told a ceremony at the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, near the beach codenamed Omaha where US troops landed and suffered heavy losses on June 6, 1944.
"Our great alliance is strong and it is still needed today," he told a crowd of war veterans following a 21-gun salute and a military flyover to honour the dead. Chirac stood beside Bush before rows of graves marked by white crosses and Stars of David.
He thanked the Allied forces for their sacrifices in the landings which forced back German troops and helped liberate Europe from the Nazis' stranglehold.
"The friendship remains intact to this day - confident, demanding, founded in mutual respect. America is our eternal ally, and that alliance and solidarity are all the stronger for having been forged in those terrible hours," Chirac said.
Their pledges followed talks in Paris on Saturday at which both leaders chose to highlight the strengths in ties in an effort to rebuild their relationship, strained by differences over the US-led invasion of Iraq, which France opposed.
Neither made any reference to Iraq. French officials had feared Bush would draw parallells between the Iraq war and D-Day by portraying both as a struggle for freedom and democracy.
TIGHT SECURITY: About 20 heads of state and government and thousands of World War Two veterans took part in the ceremonies amid one of the biggest security operations staged on French soil.
Some 30,000 soldiers were deployed in the area around the Normandy beaches and helicopters patrolled overhead. Fighter planes were ready to shoot down any aircraft violating the no-fly zone around the event if requested to do so by Paris.
Among the guests was Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the first German leader to attend D-Day events in France, and President Vladimir Putin, the first Russian head of state to attend.
"The German soldiers had a job to do, just as we had a job to do," said 81-year-old British veteran John Rockley, embodying the sport of reconciliation. "I feel no animosity towards them, and after all it was 60 years ago. -Reuters