Peron's remains moved to new mausoleum

Thousands of jostling, weeping admirers of Juan Domingo Peron tossed carnations and cheered the late political strongman today as his coffin was moved through clogged streets of Buenos Aires for reburial at a new mausoleum south-west of the Argentine capital.

Peron, who dominated Argentine politics like no other 20th-century leader with the glamorous Evita at his side, was being buried for a third time since his death in 1974.

Throngs swept by the emotion of an historic day fought to touch his slowly passing coffin as bugles sounded and pallbearers loaded the coffin on a motorised caravan headed to the new burial site.

Removed from its long-time crypt at the Chacarita cemetery, the body was carried in a flag-draped coffin topped by a military cap and sabre in a slow-moving procession led by ceremonial guards on horseback to a new £550,000 (€800,000) nmausoleum.

Traffic jams sprung up as authorities closed a major highway for the slow-moving cortege lasting hours.

President Nestor Kirchner of the ruling Peronist party was to helicopter later Tuesday to join tens of thousands of Peronists for reburial just before sunset at Peron’s former weekend estate in San Vicente, 30 miles south-west of Buenos Aires.