At the end of May 2003, the cleaning-up of the so-called 'Ground Zero', where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre once stood, came to an end.

The cleaning job was finished three months ahead of schedule, and at a lower cost that foreseen. It involved moving 1.6 million tons of debris -108,342 lorry-loads- and it took over 3.1 million working hours. An official ceremony with a few thousand silent participants took place. An empty stretcher draped in the US flag, symbolising the 'unknowns' was carried up the ramp used to move the debris from the crater.

The procession started at 10.29am, exactly the time when the second tower collapsed; a lorry carried the last girder to be removed, a 30-foot slab of steel shrouded in black and decorated with flowers. The new mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomsberg, and his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, were there with the New York State Governor, George Pataki, Senator Hillary Clinton, and many of the families of the victims and their friends. The statistics are awful: 2,823 people died there - of which 343 firefighters -  but only the remains of 1102 have been identified; many body parts were found but about 20,000 have still to be checked and, possibly, identified.

The designs for the site reconstruction were the object of an open competition that ended on February 27, 2003. Architect Daniel Liebeskind's project was chosen, but work on the 10 million square feet office space building will not begin for about one year.

On July 16, 2003, the Daniel Liebeskind, was involved in a bitter dispute with the property developer, Larry Silverstein, who owns a lease on the site, although the real owners are the states of New York and New Jersey through the Port Authority. The New York City Mayor, the local residents, and the survivors groups have no legal rights in the decision-making process. The architect's vision clashes with the commercial demands of prime real estate. The owner of the lease already received $1.3bn from the building's insurers and expects between $3.5 and $7bn more. He wants more office space that the architect had foreseen in his designs. The architect believes that he has a public mandate on the project, while the owner of the site believes that he should have the last say. On January 6, 2004, the chosen design of the September 11 Memorial, "Reflecting Absence", was unveiled in New York City. The competition lasted 8 months, and more than 5,000 projects from all over the world were presented. The project selected is from the designers Michael Arad and Peter Walker. As usual, many people are already criticising it as too simple! On July 4, 2004, the first 20-ton stone of the building that will replace the twin towers of the International Trade Centre was laid down.

The new tower should be the highest building in the world (541 meters or 1776 feet '1776' being, of course, the date of America's independence from Britain- and should be finished in 2009. Not to miss anything, the Americans called it 'Freedom Tower!' On July 14, 2004, the principal architect, Daniel Libeskind, is suing the site's developer, Larry Silverstein, for $843,750 of unpaid fees. The continuous arguing between the two men over the final design of the new tower is getting worse all the time compromising the construction of the new tower.

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