Queen Elizabeth addresses UN

NEW YORK (AP) - Queen Elizabeth II challenged the United Nations to fight global dangers by "waging" peace, then entered ground zero on Tuesday for the first time to honor the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Back in New York after more than three decades, the 84-year-old British monarch turned her eyes toward the future of the World Trade Center: new skyscrapers rising over what was once smoldering debris that had buried loved ones forever.

"We are not here to reminisce," she told the world body earlier Tuesday. "In tomorrow's world, we must all work together as hard as ever if we are truly to be United Nations."

Not even a record high temperature of 102 degrees, accompanied by a heat advisory, kept the monarch from New York's hallowed ground.

She arrived at the 16-acre site in lower Manhattan late Tuesday afternoon with her husband, Prince Philip. They walked slowly across a wooden walkway that reaches deep over the construction site. Huge cranes hovering overhead were stopped and workers took a break during the queen's visit.

In silence, Elizabeth laid a wreath of flowers on an iron pedestal near the footprint of the trade center's south tower. Bowing her head, she gently brushed her gloved hand against the locally grown red peonies, roses, lilies, black-eyed Susans and other summer blossoms.

Then the queen met dozens of family members and first responders who had lost loved ones as the twin towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

"The queen just was asking me about that day, and how awful it must've been," said Debbie Palmer, whose husband, battalion Fire Chief Orio Palmer, was killed. "She said, 'I don't think I've ever seen anything in my life as bad as that. And I said, 'Let's hope we never do again.'"

Palmer said of the monarch: "She's beautiful. She looks like she could be anybody's grandmother."

The queen wore a two-piece white, blue and beige print dress with long sleeves and a matching brimmed champagne-colored silk hat with flowers.

While there were "waterfalls coming down my body, there was not a drop of sweat on her face; I don't think royalty sweats," joked Nile Berry, 17, son of securities analyst David S. Berry, who died in the south tower, leaving behind three children.

"I think she understood" the significance of meeting victims' relatives, Nile told The Associated Press, adding that it would take him a while to "digest" that he had met the queen.