World leaders were to join hundreds of thousands of mourners at a state funeral for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez on Friday, as his political heir vowed to embalm the towering leftist leader "like Lenin."

The funeral for the firebrand Latin American populist was to be followed by the swearing-in of his handpicked successor Nicolas Maduro, who plans to call for elections.

Fifty-five world leaders were expected at the funeral, including Cuba's Raul Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko.

Chavez, a former paratrooper whose socialist revolution delighted the poor and infuriated the wealthy, will be embalmed "like Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Mao" and kept in a glass casket to be seen "for eternity," Maduro said Thursday.

A Filipino mortician famous for installing deceased dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a glass display case offered his services early Friday, stressing that authorities must act quickly if they want to preserve the body properly.

Maduro said the body will be taken to the "Mountain Barracks" in the January 23 slum that was a bastion of Chavez support, a facility that is now being converted into a Museum of the Revolution.

It was there that Chavez had spearheaded what proved to be a failed coup against president Carlos Andres Perez on February 4, 1992. His arrest turned him into a hero, leading to his first of many election victories in 1998.

But Maduro suggested that Chavez may one day be moved elsewhere, a nod to popular pressure for him to be taken to the national pantheon to lie alongside Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

The National Assembly president, Diosdado Cabello, said Maduro would be formally sworn-in as acting president at after the funeral.

The national electoral council is tasked with setting a date for elections, which must be called within 30 days under the constitution.

As the tense political transition gets under way, the farewell to Chavez has also been extended, with Maduro saying the public viewing period would last at least seven more days after the funeral.

Chavez lay in a half-open, glass-covered casket in the academy's hall, wearing olive green military fatigues, a black tie and the iconic red beret that became a symbol of his 14-year socialist rule.

The government said more than two million people had come since Wednesday to get a glimpse of their hero, whose petrodollar-fueled socialism earned him friends and foes at home and abroad. Many stood in line through the night.

AFP