Russians pay homage to Solzhenitsyn

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, has led mourners paying their last respects to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident writer who chronicled the horrors of the Soviet prison-camp system.

Mourners filed past Solzhenitsyn's open coffin as he lay in state at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the country's capital.

Solzhenitsyn's widow, Natalya, his two sons, Stepan and Yermolai, and other family members were also present.

In a telegram expressing his condolences to the writer's family, Putin said that Solzhenitsyn's death on Sunday was "a heavy loss for the whole of Russia".

Mourners laid flowers and crossed themselves at the ceremony.

The Nobel laureate, who spent eight years in the Gulag, the infamous Soviet prison-camp system, will be buried in an Orthodox ceremony in the 16th-century Donskoy monastery in the capital on Wednesday.

'Unafraid'

Among the mourners on Tuesday was Sergei Aristarkhov, who brought a copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn's ground-breaking account of life in a Soviet forced-labour camp, and a bouquet of white flowers.

"I came here because in the 1970s, I read this one little book that completely changed everything for me... When I heard the news yesterday, it was a terrible blow for me," said the 64-year-old mourner.

"He wrote and wasn't afraid," said Alexander Shelyudkov, a builder who attended the ceremony

"He wasn't afraid to speak his mind.... He was an example for us all," said Valentina Reshetnikova, a retired geneticist.

On Monday, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, led tributes to the writer, with a condolence telegram to his family in which he praised "one of the greatest thinkers, writers and humanists of the 20th century".

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader, were among politicians around the world who honoured the writer.

Nobel laureate

Russian newspapers have been mourning the passing of the literary giant.

"A Prophet Has Died In His Homeland," read a headline in the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

China vows safe Olympics

Chinese authorities have moved to assure athletes and spectators arriving in Beijing that the Olympic games will be safe, after an attack in western Xinjiang province killed 16 police officers.

Tuesday's attempt to allay people's security concerns came as officials in Xinjiang said that 18 "terrorists from abroad" had been arrested in the province.

China's Olympics organising committee said that it was prepared for "all possible threats".

"We believe, with the support of the government, with the help of the international community, we have the confidence and the ability to host a safe and secure Olympic games," Sun Weide, a committee spokesman, said.

China has gone all out to ensure security for the games, deploying such hardware as surface-to-air missiles near sports venues and more than 100,000 security personnel for the games, which begin on Friday and end on August 24.

Neil Fergus, who was the director of security intelligence at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, said China's security preparation for the games was "second to none".

"At this stage there's no reason to think that the Beijing Olympic games are any less secure than previous games and in fact they may be the most secure games we've ever seen," he said.