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SPEECH BY JACQUES CHIRAC PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC CEREMONY COMMEMORATING THE 11TH OF SEPTEMBER HELD AT THE RESIDENCE OF THE AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WENESDAY SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

SPEECH BY JACQUES CHIRAC - Wednesday 11 september 2002

Mr. Ambassador,
Dear American friends,

We are gathered here today to share emotion and friendship.

For days, for weeks now, the memory of this terrible tragedy, and eyewitness accounts – always highly moving and reflecting intense distress – have been placing each one of us face to face with our personal history and are making us relive the 11th of September 2001.

On that day, in New York, in Washington, and in Pennsylvania, women and men have had to endure the unspeakable: they were made aware of their own death. On that day, thousands of women and men, born on American soil or who had joined you to share in the American dream, were wounded to the core, their friendships and their own memory shattered. On that day, liberty and fraternity were grossly. The democratic ideal and the humanistic values to which we are so deeply attached were violated.

A year has elapsed, and the past is still present.

On this so painful anniversary, I wish to pay tribute to the memory of all the victims. I wish to recall the heroism of those who risked everything to save lives. I wish to pay hommage to the courage, the dignity and the patriotism of the American people, exemplary in this ordeal.


I wish to convey to each and every one of you, and through you, to all your compatriots, the friendship, loyalty and solidarity that is felt in France. And also our determination to fight against global terrorism and to relentlessly combat barbarism and the forces of hatred.

Today, France remembers. France knows what she owes to America. Today, the French people affirms its kinship with the American people.

Thank you.

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