Venezuela gives Chavez lavish farewell

More than 30 heads of state paid tribute to the leftist firebrand president as his body lay in state in a flag-covered coffin at a military academy, bringing the curtain down on a 14-year reign that divided his nation.

"There you are, undefeated, pure, transparent, unique, true, alive forever," his political heir, Nicolas Maduro, said as his voice rose and cracked in a eulogy that both praised his mentor and railed against his opponents.

"Mission accomplished comandante! The struggle goes on," said Maduro, the vice president due to be sworn in as acting president later Friday.

Venezuela's opposition will boycott the inauguration, setting the stage for a bitter election campaign, five months after Chavez beat a stronger challenger than he had been used to, Henrique Capriles, who will now likely face Maduro.

Lawmaker Angel Medina of the Democratic Union Roundtable, an umbrella grouping of opposition parties, branded the hasty swearing-in "another electoral act and a violation of the Venezuelan constitutional order."

The Supreme Court backed the inauguration and ruled that Maduro could run for office.

Venezuela's constitution bars sitting vice presidents from being presidential candidates unless they step down.

Venezuelan conductor and Los Angeles Philharmonic maestro Gustavo Dudamel led an orchestra's rendition of the national anthem to open the state funeral.

Maduro placed a replica of the golden sword of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar on his mentor's wooden casket and then handed it to his family at the end of the funeral.

Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus sat next to each other, wiping away tears as a band played one of Chavez's favorite sentimental songs, typical from his native land.

"We have lost a great leader, a great man," Ahmadinejad said after the ceremony. "Hugo came from the people and he served the people."

Several Latin American leaders, including Cuban President Raul Castro, were invited to stand around the coffin, which was closed and covered in the yellow, blue and red colors of Venezuela, in an honor guard.

As well as alliances with a motley crew of anti-Western autocrats, Chavez had also built friendships with some Hollywood stars, including Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who attended the funeral.

Chavez's body will lie in state for seven more days and officials said his body will be embalmed and preserved "like Lenin" to rest in a glass casket in the military barracks where he plotted a failed coup in 1992.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua and a crowd of flag-waving Chavez supporters greeted leaders as they arrived at the military academy for the funeral. The crowd chanted "Chavez lives, the struggle goes on!"

Venezuela is giving Chavez a long farewell, with hundreds of thousands of people filing past his open casket nonstop since Wednesday, one day after Chavez lost his two-year battle with cancer at age 58.

Some fainted from the heat, many spent the night outside to see the man who became a hero of the poor and villain of the rich with social programs funded by Venezuela's vast oil wealth. The doors re-opened to the public after the funeral and the casket was half-open again, allowing people to once more see his face.

But in a country divided by Chavez's populist style, opinions of his legacy vary, with opposition supporters in better-off neighborhoods angry at the runaway homicide rate, high inflation and expropriations.

"There are no words for what Chavez did: he ruined Venezuela," said Giuseppe Leone, a 78-year-old Venezuelan-Italian in the well-to-do east of the city.

Leaders from Africa and the Caribbean attended the funeral but European nations sent lower-level delegations while the United States was represented by its charge d'affaires and two Democratic Party politicians.

Despite testy ties, Maduro welcomed US Representative Gregory Meeks of New York and former congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, who were sent by President Barack Obama to the ceremony.

"We love all people of the Americas. But we want relations of respect, of cooperation, of true peace," he said, calling for a world "without empires."

US black civil rights leader Jesse Jackson gave a prayer, urging God to "heal the breach between the US and Venezuela."

Under Chavez, Venezuela's oil wealth underwrote the Castro brothers' communist rule in Cuba, and he repeatedly courted confrontation with Washington by cozying up to governments who shared his "anti-imperialist" worldview.

Maduro said Thursday Chavez's body will be taken to the "Mountain Barracks" in the "January 23", a public housing project that was a bastion of Chavez support. The barracks is to be converted into a Museum of the Revolution.