Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Raul Castro, Rafael Correa and other world leaders gather in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez funeral

 
Tribute: Cuban president Raul Castro salutes Hugo Chavez in his coffin
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Bo Wilson8 March 2013

More than 30 world heads of state attended Hugo Chavez’s funeral in Caracas today as the people of Venezuela mourned their late president.

Mr Chavez died on Tuesday aged 58 after a two-year battle with cancer.

His body has been lying in state after a procession through vast crowds lining the streets of the capital Caracas.

Following the funeral, Chavez’s body will be taken to a military museum to lie in state for another seven days.

It will be embalmed and put on permanent display, vice-president Nicolas Maduro revealed. “All these measures are being taken so that the people can be with their leader forever,” he said.

Mr Maduro will be sworn in as caretaker president after the funeral. Mr Chavez, who led Venezuela for 14 years, named him as his preferred successor. A presidential election will take place within a month.

Among the politicians gathering in Caracas was a relatively low-level two-man delegation from the United States, with whom Chavez was long at odds.

Also there was Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has praised Mr Chavez as a “martyr” and a “wise and revolutionary leader”. Close Chavez allies attending included Ecuador’s leader Rafael Correa, Cuban president Raul Castro and Brazil’s current and former leaders Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“Most importantly, he left undefeated,” said Castro in a reference to Chavez’s four presidential election wins and a string of other ballot victories in his 14-year rule.

“He was invincible. He left victorious and no one can take that away. It is fixed in history.”

The Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez, a close friend, was one of the first high-profile mourners to arrive after Mr Chavez’s death. She flew home to Buenos Aires yesterday, it was reported, and was not at the funeral.

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