The Week Ahead: Jackie's final journey

THE woman who entranced America for nearly four decades, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, will be buried today as a Kennedy, alongside her first husband, President JFK, and a child who died in infancy and another who was stillborn. The burial at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia will take place after a funeral service in New York.

Hillary Clinton will be at the service as a friend of the family and will fly with the Kennedys on a jet carrying the coffin to Washington. But President Bill Clinton is staying away to help keep the funeral service private. He will meet the entourage at National Airport and speak at the burial.

One of the world's emotive animal issues comes under scrutiny today when 40 nations of the International Whaling Commission begin a five-day conference in the Puerto Vallarta resort in Mexico. They will decide on a French proposal for a 28.5 million square kilometre (11 million square mile) sanctuary for whales surrounding Antarctica, and intended to last for at least 50 years.

In South Africa's transition to normality the first all-race parliament meets tomorrow in Cape Town. President Nelson Mandela will give his first state-of-the-nation address - and will be eagerly listened to - as he outlines plans to wipe out the dismal legacy of apartheid and improve life for deprived blacks.

Two United Nations conferences starting tomorrow focus on human conflict and tragedy. In Geneva the Human Rights Commission will hold a two-day meeting on the slaughter in Rwanda. There does not seem much prospect of it achieving anything. But the two-day Vienna conference might have some success: it will deal with rebuilding Sarajevo.

Sentences will be passed on Wednesday on the four men convicted of bombing New York's World Trade Center on 26 February 1993. Sentencing has been delayed by an argument over legal representation but it is expected that the accused will be jailed for life.

On Friday, Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia from 20 years of exile. On the same day, in another happy consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union, a ceremony in Berlin will mark the departure of British troops, stationed there since the end of the Second World War.

Accord for Russia is to hold its founding conference as an opposition coalition in Moscow next weekend - if it overcomes the lack of funds and organisational problems which forced a postponement. And if its members, united in their dislike of President Boris Yeltsin, can overcome their mistrust of each other.