Tunisia Buries Former Leader Bourguiba, 96
Habib Bourguiba, the forward-looking former Tunisian president who brought the country to independence, was buried Saturday in the coastal city of Monastir as thousands crowded around the family mausoleum for a last goodbye.
Mourners including French President Jacques Chirac, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Ivory Coast junta leader Gen. Robert Guei, who gathered to honor the man who was an international elder statesman for decades but faded from public view after he was toppled in a bloodless coup in 1987.
A military band marched at the front of the funeral procession as it headed toward the imposing marble mausoleum towering over the beach. Thousands of mourners had been waiting at the mausoleum since early morning to see the ceremony.
Bourguiba, 96, died in solitude Thursday in Monastir, the Mediterranean coastal city where he was born, 100 miles southeast of the capital, Tunis.
During three decades of authoritarian rule, Bourguiba put this Muslim North African country on its pro-Western course. He fought against what he regarded as outdated Islamic traditions and angered fundamentalists by giving equal rights to women and discouraging the holy fast of Ramadan.
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