November 17, 2002	Sunday	Ramazan 11, 1423

PARIS, Nov 16: The city of Paris says that it will soon make it easier for residents of the French capital to die in peace and be assured of finding burial space.

For the moment, finding burial space has become a major headache for the city’s new mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, who included in his electoral promises the possibility for every denizen of Paris to find an appropriate burial site in the city’s 14 cemeteries.

There are only 1,300 burial places that become available in Paris during a given year. This means that a good number of the dead have to be taken outside the city for burial.

But, if Mr Delanoe and his new city government have their way, every Parisian will now have the possibility of being able to die in peace fully knowing that he can be buried within city limits.

If one does not have the requisite connections or could not come up with the estimated $10,000 that a simple plot at one of the more sought-out resting places used to cost, he is obliged to accept a space in one of the other cemeteries operated by the city of Paris, but outside the city limits, notably at Thiais in the Val de Marne, the same cemetery where the city’s paupers are still regularly buried.