Chavez's body hard to preserve

CARACAS - Venezuelan Acting President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday admitted that it would be "very difficult" to embalm the body of late President Hugo Chavez due to technical reasons.

Maduro said scientists from Russia and Germany had arrived in the country for the embalming process, but the preservation was expected "to be quite difficult" because technical preparations should have started earlier than before.

Chavez's body has been kept in the chapel of Military Academy for a week, following the official announcement of his death on March 5.

Maduro said on March 7 that the body of the political leader would be embalmed and displayed in a glass case of Revolution Museum so that "people can see forever", a decision made "out of love" and raised by military chiefs and some foreign leaders who attended Chavez's funeral last Friday.

Meanwhile, Chavez's supporters had proposed taking his body to the National Pantheon, where national heroes like Simon Bolivar and Antonio Jose de Sucre rest. But the proposal, if adopted by the government, may require constitutional amendment.