Arab World Honours Arafat

Yasser Arafat's coffin, draped in the Palestinian flag, was borne by an Egyptian guard of honour into a military mosque today for a funeral service attended by presidents and ministers from more than 50 countries.

"He has served his people all his life, until he faced his God, with courage and honesty. Let us pray for his soul," the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, leading the service, told the gathered dignitaries.

The service was broadcast live on Egyptian television, with all foreign journalists barred from the mosque. It was attended by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and state leaders from Arab and African nations, including Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

Most European countries sent lower level delegations - the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, attended on behalf of the UK government. The US sent Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, in what was seen as a slight attesting to its boycott of Arafat as an "obstacle to peace".

As expected, Israel dispatched no one. "I do not think we should send a representative to the funeral of somebody who killed thousands of our people," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said.

After the brief ceremony, which was closed to the public and held amid tight security in a Cairo suburb, the coffin was transferred to a horse-drawn carriage for a military procession through the city bearing all the hallmarks of a state occasion.

The surrounding streets, many of them sealed off, were lined with hundreds of policemen. Soldiers on rooftops surveyed the area with binoculars.

The Palestinian leader's body will to be flown to the West Bank later today for burial at his Ramallah headquarters, where mourners have already begun gathering in large numbers. The Palestinian Authority has declared a 40-day mourning period.

Israeli troops, who sealed off the occupied territories ahead of the funeral, were today placed on the highest state of security since a wave of suicide bombing in 2002.

Minor clashes have already been reported today between troops and Palestinian youths at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site, where mourners have been barred from praying.

At the Ramallah compound, where Israeli forces kept Arafat holed up for almost three years until he fell gravely ill two weeks ago and was airlifted to Paris, workmen were racing against the clock to complete a white marble grave site.

A senior Muslim cleric said Mr Arafat would be laid to rest in a concrete coffin that could be moved later to nearby Jerusalem, where the Palestinian leader wished to be buried.

Israel ruled out a burial in Arab East Jerusalem, fearing this would strengthen Palestinians' claim to a capital in the part of the city captured by the Jewish state in the 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally.

Doctors at the Percy military hospital in Paris, where Mr Arafat died in the early hours of yesterday, aged 75, after several days in a coma, have refused to reveal the cause of his death, citing family confidentiality.