A Florida pastor said yesterday his church will never burn a Koran, even if a mosque is built near ground zero.

Pastor Terry Jones had threatened to burn the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the 11 September attacks over plans to build an Islamic centre near where militants brought down the World Trade Centre nine years ago.

He flew to New York and appeared on NBC's Today show. He said that his church's goal was "to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical".

He said: "We have definitely accomplished that mission".

He said no meeting is planned with the imam leading the centre but he hopes one will take place.

Politics threatened to overshadow the day of mourning for nearly 3,000 September 11 victims amid a polarising national debate over a planned mosque close to the site where Islamic extremists attacked the US.

Chants of thousands of sign-waving protesters both for and against the planned Islamic centre were expected after ? and perhaps during ? a ceremony normally known for sombre church bells ringing and a sad litany of families reading their lost loved ones' names.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were due to attend separate services in Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for the victims of hijacked jetliners that hit the Pentagon and a rural field in 2001.

But the rallies planned in New York embroiled victims' family members in a feud over whether to support demonstrations on the ninth anniversary of the attacks.

Nancy Nee, whose firefighter brother was killed at the World Trade Centre, is bitterly opposed to the Park 51 proposed mosque and Islamic community centre near ground zero. But she didn't plan to join other family members at an anti-mosque rally hours after the anniversary ceremony.

"I just wanted to be as at peace with everything that's going on as I possibly can," Nee said. Even nine years later, she said, her brother George Cain's death "is still very raw....

"And I just don't have it in me to be protesting and arguing, with anger in my heart and in my head."

Jim Riches planned to pay respects at ground zero to his firefighter son, Jimmy, then rally.

"My son can't speak anymore. He's been murdered by Muslims. I intend to voice my opinion against the location of this mosque," Riches said. "If someone wants to go home, that's their right. I have the right to go there."

The heated mosque debate ? pitting advocates of religious freedom against critics who say that locating an Islamic centre so close to ground zero disrespects the dead ? led Obama to say on Friday, "We are not at war against Islam."

Jones, pastor of a 50-member Pentecostal church, backed off the threat on Thursday after a call from the secretary of defence and impassioned pleas to call off the plan from religious and political leaders and his own daughter.

Jones previously had said he would cancel his plan if the leader of the proposed Islamic centre, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, would agree to move the project to another location and had said he wanted to meet Rauf in New York.

Rauf said on Friday he was "prepared to consider meeting with anyone who is seriously committed to pursuing peace," but had no such meeting planned with Jones.

In Afghanistan, shops and police checkpoints were set on fire as thousands of people protested against Jones' plan.