World leaders join Czechs in mourning hero Havel

World leaders will join the Czech Republic in bidding a final farewell Friday to the country's freedom icon and first post-communism president Vaclav Havel, who died this week aged 75. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton top the official list of those attending the state funeral at Prague Castle, the seat of Czech presidents. The funeral marks the third and final day of national mourning for Havel, who led his nation through the bloodless 1989 Velvet Revolution that toppled Soviet-backed communism in then-Czechoslovakia. A dissident playwright whose work focused heavily on the totalitarian regime's inhumanity, Havel's best-known saying is, "Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred." He went on to serve as president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and subsequently the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003 as the former federation split peacefully into two states. Slovakia has declared Friday a day of national mourning too. The Czechs' official good-bye to Havel, who died Sunday following a long illness, will start around 1030 GMT Friday as mourners gather in Saint Vitus Cathedral at the castle. At noon, the nation will observe a minute's silence expected to stop traffic and work in many places. Church bells are to peal in unison across the country for three minutes and canons will fire 21 ceremonial salvos from a hill opposite Prague Castle. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and Czech-born former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright are to speak at the funeral. Tens of thousands of Czechs over the past few days have paid homage to their famous leader, standing in long lines in the Prague cold to view his casket at a church building in the city centre. "I admired the man incredibly for his courage, his noble character, his ideas, for the sacrifice he made for us all," said a visibly moved Jan Zelenka, the editor of several of Havel's books, queuing with a pink rose. The casket was moved Wednesday to the castle hill and put on a horse-drawn gun carriage, which had also been used for the 1937 funeral of the first Czechoslovak president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, and driven to the vast, vaulted-ceiling Vladislav Hall for another public viewing. After the funeral, Havel's body will be cremated in accordance with his family's wishes. The website of the largest Czech broadsheet daily DNES quoted Havel's secretary Sabina Tancevova as saying his ashes would be entombed after Christmas, possibly on December 27, at a family crypt in a Prague cemetery. The presidents of Austria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are also expected to attend the funeral service. On Friday evening, a rock concert dedicated to Havel -- himself a great rock fan -- will be staged at the Lucerna Palace, a sprawling edifice built at the turn of the last century by Havel's grandfather, a construction magnate.