New Yorkers of the World Unite

摘要

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine has at times been a prickly critic of the U.S., terming it the world's "hyper-power." But when it comes to New York, Vedrine-like so many of his compatriots-is an unabashed devo-tee of the Big Apple. As soon as Ve-drine heard about the terrorist attacks on September 11, he rushed back to his offices along the river Seine and hud-dled, transfixed and horrified, around a television monitor.rnHis first thought was of his many friends in New York, and over the next hours, he and his aides frantical-ly tried to telephone and e-mail Man-hattan; only that evening would Ve-drine be assured that all, luckily, were safe and sound. "Watching those im-ages of fire and airplane missiles, of bodies falling into the void, I thought back of all my trips to New York, al-most twenty in the last twenty years," Vedrine recalls. "In my head were all those walks, restaurants, parks, museums, galleries, films, the dog days of summer, the snow and the wind. I relived my arrivals in that city of cities, each time with the same emotion."