Mexican President Vicente Fox yesterday pledged to assist the world in fighting terrorism and to aid Mexican families with loved ones missing from in and around the World Trade Center.

"I stand at your side and at your government's side in this struggle," he told the crowd of 1,000, which included many immigrants from the country he leads. His voice carrying above the filled pews of St. Bernardo's Church on West 14th Street in Manhattan, Fox called the attack "an act not only against the U.S. but against all free nations."

He urged the growing Mexican population that has traveled 3,000 miles to New York only to lose jobs and a sense of safety as a result of the attack to seek assistance from the U.S. Consulate General of Mexico in Manhattan.

Luz María Mendoza, a woman who came to New York in the wake of the strike to seek her missing husband, Juan Ortega, spoke before the president. She haltingly told Fox and the crowd that "at this moment we [families of disappeared Mexicans] need your help."

Mendoza, whose story was told in Newsday on Monday, said she had yet to receive any share of the hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance raised for grieving families.

"I trust the president and his words," she said as Fox and his entourage left for a meeting with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki, and a tour of the World Trade Center disaster site. "But I have not been able to receive anything."

Mendoza has visited the city's family assistance center at Pier 94 to apply for aid such as a $1,500 immediate allocation granted by the state Crime Victim's Board. But she said that because her husband was undocumented and had no way to prove his place of employment, complications have arisen.

The Consulate General of Mexico in Manhattan has officially counted 16 Mexican nationals missing from in and around the World Trade Center.

However, the nonprofit Asociación Tepeyac de New York has tallied 23 Mexicans missing, including 66 mostly undocumented immigrants missing from several nations.

Tepeyac, a nonprofit group assisting Latino groups, also has counted 700 immigrants unemployed because their places of work are near Ground Zero, many of them part of a growing Mexican population in New York.

Though the Mexican government has provided a group Spanish-speaking psychological counselors to help those emotionally recovering from the attack, Joel Magallán, a Jesuit brother and executive director of Tepeyac, said it was not enough.

Magallán attended the speech and handed out fliers urging Fox to implement stronger measures to assist Mexicans in New York, including a declaration of a state of emergency to help the disappeared and unemployed by the tragedy.

Fox met earlier in the day with President George W. Bush at the White House, where the presidents affirmed their commitment to mutual support in fighting terrorism.

Through a relationship cultivated when Bush was governor of Texas, Fox has sought immigration amnesty for about 3 million undocumented Mexicans in the United States, calling their contributions to the work force a boost to the economy of both nations.

But the effort is stalled as legislators turn their attention to anti-terrorism measures resulting from the World Trade Center attacks.