Leaders from 92 countries, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai, were at the commemorative at Battery Park

NEW YORK : This wounded city, often described by its citizens as the “capital of the world,” rounded off a day of mourning the dead of the Sept. 11 terror attacks with a somber and moving ceremony at Battery Park that was attended by leaders from 92 countries, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The 40-minute ‘Eternal Flame Ceremony,’ had as its highlight the lighting of a flame that will burn in perpetuity to honor the over 2,800 people killed in the terror strikes last year. The ceremony was held against the backdrop of the flags of the 92 countries to which the victims belonged. Seventy-one victims — at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC), the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and in the hijacked aircraft used as missiles — were of South Asian origin. As dusk settled, the ceremony began, with an imposing cross — girders shaped like one that emerged from “the pile” at Ground Zero — and a 4,500-pound sphere that once graced the WTC Plaza bearing testimony to the devastation caused by the terror strikes.

“There are those who say that freedom of man and mind is a dream... It is an American dream,” the mayor said at the ceremony that stood out for its poignancy rather than its speeches. They also testified, perhaps, to New York’s resilience.

The sphere, moved to Battery Park in March this year, was battered and bruised when the Twin Towers collapsed, but has survived to be chosen as one of the several permanent memorials to the cataclysmic event that changed the course of world history.

After a band played ‘Fanfare for the Common Man,’ city mayor Michael Bloomberg briefly underlined what America stood for. “There are those who say that freedom of man and mind is a dream... It is an American dream,” the mayor said at the ceremony that stood out for its poignancy rather than its speeches.

Bloomberg spoke of four freedoms in the American Constitution, “freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship any god in any part of the world, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.”

Aided by former firefighter John Vigiano, who lost both his sons — one a policeman and the other a firefighter — in the WTC attack, Bloomberg, flanked by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, then lit the ‘Eternal Flame.’ The leaders of the 92 nations filed past the flame, each collecting as memento a candle from Bloomberg, before stopping briefly to exchange a few words with Annan and Powell. They then gathered in a semi-circle behind the flame.

The Prime Minister Vajpayee was the last leader to come on stage, and Bloomberg, in deference to his age, walked up to him to hand over the memento.

The event, which was beamed live to the nation as well as to giant screens in each of the five burroughs of the city, ended with Amanda Brown singing ‘Oh Beautiful America,’ her refrain of ‘From Sea to Shining Sea’ being taken up by the thousands who were watching the event across the city. The song marked the finale of a day that saw hundreds of commemorative ceremonies across the country.

President George W. Bush led the nation in keeping a moment’s silence at 8.46 a.m. — the time the first aircraft struck the WTC — at the White House. He later visited the Pentagon and Shankesville in Pennsylvania, the site where a fourth hijacked aircraft was forced to crash-land by its passengers.

The president arrived in New York in the evening for a brief ceremony at Ground Zero at which he laid a wreath and spoke with relatives of WTC victims — including those of Indian origin — who had gathered there on the occasion of the anniversary of the attacks.