Obama, 3 former presidents, at Kennedy farewell (2nd Lead)

Aug 29, 2009, 15:36 GMT

Washington - US President Barack Obama was among the hundreds of mourners attending Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy's funeral on Saturday in a final farewell to the last brother of the celebrated Kennedy dynasty.

Obama and predecessors Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W Bush as well as Kennedy's family, friends, colleagues and political rivals gathered at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston for the Catholic funeral.

Obama was to give the eulogy to the late senator whose endorsement gave a huge boost to the current president's White House ambitions.

The three former presidents sat in a second row, and Clinton leaned forward to chat with Obama before the services, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in conversation with Bush.

Kennedy's widow, Vicki, looked on solemnly from her front row aisle seat directly across from Obama as speakers read from the Bible.

'We hold the life of Edward Kennedy wit reverence and respect,' said Father J Donald Monan, who paid tribute to Kennedy's decades of efforts to help the less fortunate.

Kennedy died late Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts after battling brain cancer for more than year.

The death of the political icon at the age of 77 was marked with great sadness in the United States and generated an outpouring of condolences from around the world. The funeral was aired live on all the major US television networks.

Despite the scandal that sometimes dogged Kennedy and his family, he was remembered for his tireless fight against poverty and for better health care during his 47 years in the Senate and as the backbone of the Democratic Party.

Kennedy's name is attached to countless pieces of congressional legislation over more than four decades, including reforms of education, immigration, civil rights and voting rights.

Following the mass, Kennedy's body was to be taken to Washington for a late afternoon burial at Arlington National Cemetery, the graveyard near the Pentagon that is the final resting place of many of America's war dead.

Kennedy's final resting place will be steps away from the graves of his assassinated brothers - president John F Kennedy who was shot in 1963 and Robert Kennedy, who suffered the same fate while campaigning for the presidency in 1968.

Saturday's services followed two days of morning in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts and state Kennedy represented in the Senate for more than 47 years. His American flag-draped casket had been placed in the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for a public viewing.

During the two days, more than 50,000 people filed past the casket, watched over by a US military honour guard.

A private service was held Friday night. Sharing anecdotes from decades past and recent weeks, Kennedy's relatives and colleagues recalled his passion for public service, his optimism in the possible, his large-heartedness, dignity, generosity and refusal to quit.

Among the speakers were Vice President Joe Biden and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Both spent decades as Kennedy's Senate colleagues.

'In an astonishing and totally unexpected way he ended up playing a part in every critical moment of my adult life,' Biden said. 'He crept into my heart and before I knew it, he owned a piece of it.'

'I wouldn't be standing here as vice-president of the United States were it not for Teddy. He was the catalyst for my improbable win as a young senator,' he said.