WASHINGTON, Sept 4: President Pervez Musharraf will join other world leaders on Sept 11 in a candlelight vigil in New York to honour victims of last year’s terrorist attacks, officials said on Wednesday.
The remembrance will start earlier in the day when the US President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, lay flowers at Ground Zero, the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
Hijackers flew two commercial jets into the TWC’s twin towers, levelling the buildings and killing more than 3,000 people. Hundreds more died when a third hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, near Washington, and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Bush wants to appear only with his wife for the wreath-laying ceremony, but other world leaders will join him later at Battery Park in lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero, for a candlelight vigil for the victims.
Some officials said Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai might join Bush in laying a wreath at Ground Zero, but this has not been confirmed by the Bush administration. If he is invited to take part, Karzai will be the only foreign dignitary to do so.
The Afghan leader is expected to arrive in New York on Monday — two days before the anniversary of the attacks — and meet Bush the next day.
Initial reports said Bush would travel to New York to meet Karzai, but White House sources said later the US president would head to New York on Sept 11, the day after his scheduled meeting with Karzai. The sources, however, have refused to say where the meeting will take place.
Karzai is said to be supporting the US war in Afghanistan at great personal risk. He is protected by US troops who replaced his Afghan bodyguards after the assassination of one of his three vice-presidents two months ago.
Due to security concerns, US officials are not even confirming that other world leaders would also attend the anniversary commemoration. “Other world leaders may or may not attend the remembrance,” said a White House official when asked to comment.
“We will not ask a head of state or government not to come,” said a State Department official when asked if leaders from other nations will be attending the vigil too.
Many world leaders will be in New York to attend the UN General Assembly and most of them are believed to have informed US officials that they would be like to join Bush in sharing in the grief over the deaths of innocent civilians killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The victims included Americans and citizens from several other countries.
President Musharraf, who arrives in New York on Sept 11, will attend the candlelight vigil at Battery Park, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington said.
President Musharraf dumped his former Taliban allies soon after the terror attacks, supporting the U.S. military offensive in Afghanistan. His move annoyed Pakistan’s small but powerful religious lobby, which is now campaigning to unseat him.
Militants have carried out several terrorist attacks inside Pakistan since then, killing dozens of Pakistanis, 11 French naval engineers and two Americans. Pakistani media have reported at least one attempt on Musharraf’s life as well.
