Statue of Liberty reopens after 9/11

New York has been singled out often as a potential terrorist target, most recently on Sunday with government warnings of possible truck bomb attacks by Al Qaeda on financial centres.

Officials improved emergency exits, created new exits, tightened security screening, overhauled fire control systems and enclosed stairways for safe passage in case of a fire.‘‘We have an array of safety and security improvements that are in place today that were not here before 9/11,’’ Larry Parkinson, the US Interior Department official in charge of security, said.

But the National Park Service, which runs the island, and the Department of Interior have no plans to allow visitors to make the 22-storey climb of more than 350 steps to the statue’s crown — something one New York Congressman has decried as a ‘‘win for the terrorists’’.

US Representative Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, described the reopening of the base, pedestal and observation deck as ‘‘no triumph’’ for the US in its declared war on terrorism. ‘‘If we do not reopen the Statue of Liberty’s crown, the terrorists will have won,’’ Weiner said. ‘‘Reopening her feet is no triumph.’’

In testimony in May to the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg complains the city had not got its fair share of public funds to cope with terrorist threats.

He says New York, with 8 million people, had received only $5.47 per capita in homeland security grants in 2004 — the second lowest in the US — compared to $38.31 per person in Wyoming. The statue’s reopening also comes amid congressional criticism that the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation overpaid its executives and improperly oversaw donations.

Lady Liberty was a gift from France in 1886. It became a symbol of American promise for immigrants arriving by ship, and of political freedom. —(Reuters)