St Petersburg burial for Tsar

THE Russian government recommended yesterday that the remains of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family should finally be buried on 17 July in the church of St Peter-Paul in St Petersburg, the last resting place of their imperial ancestors, writes Helen Womack in Moscow.

President Boris Yeltsin will have the final say, but experts think it unlikely he will overrule his cabinet, which made the decision after a three-hour long meeting - a move that will disappoint Eduard Rossel, governor of Yekaterinburg, where the Tsar and his family were executed in 1918, who had wanted them to be buried in his city.