Ruairi Quinn to represent Government at Thatcher funeral

Labour TD and Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn will represent the Government at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher next week.

Invitations to more than 2,000 guests will be sent out tomorrow for the funeral of the former British Conservative prime minister who died on Monday.

Prime Minister David Cameron's office made it clear today that invitations will be sent far and wide.

"Around 200 states, territories and international organisations are being invited to send an official representative to the funeral service," a spokesman said.

"We have invited those countries and institutions with whom we have normal diplomatic relations."

However Britain will not invite Argentine President Cristina Fernandez to in a snub likely to deepen a long-running diplomatic dispute over the Falkland Islands. Thatcher led Britain at the time of the 1982 Falklands war ordering her armed forces to repel an Argentine invasion of the contested South Atlantic archipelago which Argentina calls Las Malvinas.

Just over 30 years later, memories of the conflict remain raw and Ms Fernandez has mounted a campaign to renegotiate the islands' sovereignty, lobbying Pope Francis on the issue and rejecting a referendum last month in which Falkland residents voted to remain a British Overseas Territory.

A government source told Reuters that every country with whom Britain enjoys "normal" diplomatic relations was being invited to Wednesday's funeral, but Thatcher's family had objected to Ms Fernandez attending.

"It's about adhering to her family's wishes," the source said. A government spokesman said Argentina's ambassador to Britain would be invited, and that was in keeping with protocol.

Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman brushed off the apparent snub.

"It does not matter to me to be invited to a place where I don't want to go," he told a local radio station. "It is another provocation. The woman died, let the family mourn her in peace".

Mikhail Gorbachev, 82, the last leader of the Soviet leader, will not be able to attend because of ill health, his spokesman said. Nancy Reagan, 91, the widow of Thatcher's great political US ally Ronald Reagan, will also not be able to make the trip.

Mr Cameron's office said those who have already said they will attend include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, FW de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It said invitations would be extended to all surviving British prime ministers and surviving former US presidents, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and a representative of South Africa's Nelson Mandela, who is 94 and in poor health.

Others to confirm their attendance so far include Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Thatcher-era predecessor, Brian Mulroney. Singer Shirley Bassey, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and television presenter Jeremy Clarkson will also be there.

More than 700 armed forces personnel will take part in the ceremony and the 10 coffin bearers will be drawn from regiments and units that played a pivotal role in the conflict.

In a ceremonial funeral with military honours and attended by Queen Elizabeth, Thatcher's coffin will be drawn on a gun carriage by six horses through London to a service at St Paul's Cathedral, a format that has drawn criticism from some politicians and commentators for its pomp and public expense.

Military guests have been told to wear full-day ceremonial dress without swords, while civilians have been instructed to wear tail coats with black waistcoats and black ties or a dark suit, and women to wear a hat.

Roads in central London will be closed, the capital's transport authority said, while Cameron's weekly question-and- answer session in Parliament, traditionally held at noon on Wednesdays, will be canceled.

The ceremonial funeral procession will run from Parliament in Westminster, along Whitehall, through Trafalgar Square, on to the Strand, Aldwych, Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, where it will end at St. Paul's Cathedral.

Reuters/Bloomberg