Hundreds queue to bid Havel farewell

Prague, Dec 21 (CTK) - Hundreds of people are queueing at Prague Castle to pay their last respects to the late former president Vaclav Havel whose coffin has been laid in state in the historical Vladislav Hall.

The coffin was put on a catafalque in the hall in a military ceremony earlier yesterday. The hall was opened to the public at 13:00. People can bid farewell to Havel yesterday and Thursday, before his funeral scheduled for Friday, December 23.

Havel, former leading anti-communist dissident and post-1989 Czechoslovak president and later Czech president, died on December 18 at the age of 75, after protracted respiratory problems.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the Vladislav Hall is the most suitable place for a farewell ceremony. It was in the Vladislav Hall that the legislators elected Havel the first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989, Klaus recalled.

The coffin was brought to the hall by soldiers walking along a red carpet to the accompaniment of the ringing of St Vitus Cathedral's Zikmund (Sigismund) bell, the country's biggest bell from 1549.

The coffin, draped in the national flag, was carried to Prague Castle from the nearby Castle Guards' barracks on a gun-carriage drawn by six Kladruby black horses.

It was the same gun-carriage, designed for howitzers, that was used to carry the remains of first Czechoslovak president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk in 1937.

Walking behind the howitzer was Havel's widow Dagmar Havlova and other family members as well as supreme state representatives, including Klaus, Prime Minister Petr Necas, the chairpersons of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Milan Stech and Miroslava Nemcova, respectively, the military's chief of staff Vlastimil Picek and Constitutional Court chairman Pavel Rychetsky.

The top Czech state decorations that the Senate lent Havel, the Order of the White Lion and the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Order, were carried in the procession.

The ceremony in the Vladislav Hall was attended by Havel's relatives, including Havlova and his brother Ivan Havel.

Those attending included former prime ministers Milos Zeman and Jan Fischer, and also deputies and senators.

Wreaths from Havlova, Havel's family, supreme state representatives and the military were laid on the catafalque.

A wreath from Slovenian President Danilo Tuerk was also laid at the coffin.

Other wreaths include one with the inscription "De los Cubanos libres" (from free Cubans).

Klaus gave a speech on this occasion.

The military ceremony was preceded by a procession in the morning in which Havel's coffin was driven from the Prague Crossroads centre, where it was displayed in the past days, to Prague Castle.

The police say about 10,000 people joined the procession but according to journalists' estimate, their number was several times higher.