Worldwide congregation will attend Reagan funeral

As many as 4,000 U.S. officials, foreign heads of state and family friends of Ronald Reagan will pay their final respects to the former president today at the first national funeral in Washington in more than 30 years.

President Bush and more than a thousand U.S. government officials and members of Congress will be at the Washington National Cathedral in Northwest, when the service begins at 11:30 a.m., and many of the District’s thoroughfares will be closed as the former president’s casket is ushered there from the Capitol.

Members of the Senate and their spouses have been reserved 200 seats, with an additional 870 seats reserved for members of the House and their spouses.

Former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton will attend the service.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will be on hand, as will Britain’s Prince Charles and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry will be among those attending, a Kerry staffer said.

Although many countries will be represented by senior diplomats and foreign ministers, the heads of state from Germany, Italy, Ireland, South Africa, Nigeria, Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia, Afghanistan, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Grenada and Haiti have confirmed that they will be present.

An elaborate chart of the planned seating arrangements shows that the two central rows of seating in the middle of the massive, 30-story-high cathedral, will be filled on one side by distinguished visitors and on the other by the Reagan family and about a thousand of their friends.

Former Sen. John C. Danforth, an ordained Episcopal minister from Missouri who is the nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, will conduct the service. Irish tenor Ronan Tynan will perform Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”

Mr. Reagan will be eulogized by Mr. Bush, former President George Bush and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will provide a recorded eulogy.

Rabbi Harold Kushner and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will give readings at the ceremony. In 1981, Justice O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the high court after being nominated by Mr. Reagan.

Security for the event is being managed by the U.S. Secret Service and involves thousands of police and federal law-enforcement agents. The Army Military District of Washington will be responsible for shuttling thousands of dignitaries to and from the site.

The funeral procession is expected to leave Capitol Hill between 10:30 and 10:45 a.m. today. It will travel west on Constitution Avenue, south on Third Street, west on Independence Avenue, north on 17th Street, west on Pennsylvania Avenue, north on 22nd Street, west on Massachusetts Avenue and north on Wisconsin Avenue to the cathedral.

The procession route and intersecting streets will close 30 minutes in advance, except for an area around the cathedral bounded by Macomb Street, Massachusetts Avenue, 34th Street and Idaho Avenue, which will close at 9 a.m. People who live in the area must show proof of residency to enter, Metropolitan Police said.

Officials at the National Cathedral yesterday cited security concerns for not releasing specific details about where people will be sitting during the ceremony or the order in which the distinguished guests will be arriving.

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