Celebrations Usher in 2003, Security Beefed up Worldwide

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 02, 2003

Celebrations Usher in 2003, Security Beefed up Worldwide

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Security Tightens in New York

As the New Year dawned, people around the globe had their own ways to greet it, but celebrations the world over shared one thing in common: heightened security amid fears of possible terrorist attacks.

In New York, an estimated half million revelers gathered on Tuesday night under tight security for the 99th New Year's Eve party in Times Square, one of the world's best known celebrations that offered a mix of traditional and new tricks to ring in 2003.

"Superman" star Christopher Reeve, paralyzed from neck down by a 1995 horse-riding accident, together with his wife, Dana, was invited to join New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in pushing down a miniature ball to start the traditional crystal ball downing that symbolically signifies the arrival of the New Year.

Police in New York took special precautions for the event. Officers from the bomb squad, emergency services and other special units swept the district and the transit system. Snipers were posted on high-rises, and heavily armed officers were deployed in armored sport utility vehicles ready for action.

While a heavy police presence guarded the square, extra police patrol boats blocked New York harbor after federal homeland security officials warned of "possible attacks to occur at unspecific times" on New Year's Eve.

Partying throngs were of a smaller size in Europe, but security remained as tight as in the United States. On the renowned Champs-Elysees in Paris, several hundred thousand people turned out to celebrate the start of 2003. For the first time, the subway and suburban train network ran all night long to transport partygoers as the city had banned cars, motorbikes and bicycles around the celebration site. City authorities posted 6,500 police to fend off possible attacks.

In London, where the celebrations had been moved from the traditional Trafalgar Square to the Millennium Dome due to construction work, 2,000 police officers were on high alert.

Double-digit temperatures below zero did not prevent Russians from celebrating the New Year outdoors. Moscow's Red Square saw big crowds at midnight and President Vladimir Putin spoke to the nation on television on New Year's Eve on an optimistic note, assuring Russians that the country "is meeting its future properly."

In Indonesia, where memories of the Bali terrorist bombings still run fresh in people's minds, President Megawati Sukarnoputri's New Year speech concluded with an anti-terrorist touch.

As festivities worldwide went attack-free on New Year's Eve, people in some places had their own problems to attend to around New Year.

On Tuesday night, Mexico's port city of Vera Cruz was rocked by a powerful fireworks explosion, which killed 18 and injured another 35. The blast occurred when fireworks on a truck went off accidentally.

In strike-plagued Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil producer, the celebrations early on Wednesday turned into calls bythe opposition for the ousting of President Hugo Chavez.

Thousands of supporters of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement rallied in Gaza City on Tuesday to show support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the occasion of Fatah's 38th anniversary.

Addressing the rally by phone from his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat congratulated Palestinians "at home, in Diaspora, in Israeli jails, as well as those wounded at hospitals and the martyrs."

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