Worldwide congregation will attend Reagan funeral

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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.