STOCKHOLM, 20 September 2003 — Anna Lindh’s political, diplomatic and personal friends from Sweden and around the world bade an emotional farewell to the murdered foreign minister in a memorial service held in Stockholm yesterday.

Guests included British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whom Lindh once kept waiting during a meeting to take a call from her son, the German and French foreign ministers Joschka Fischer and Dominique de Villepin, EU Commission President Romano Prodi and a number of other top diplomats.

Lindh died on Sept. 11, a day after being stabbed in a department store in central Stockholm. Yesterday, prosecutors asked to extend the detention of a suspect arrested earlier in the week in connection with the popular politician’s murder.

As flags flew at half-mast across Sweden, a light rain drizzled down over Stockholm’s City Hall where the 75-minute ceremony gathered some 1,300 high-profile guests as well as Lindh’s family and close friends, a day ahead of her funeral which will be a strictly private affair.

“Few, very few, events stop the clocks. One such event is the death of Anna Lindh,” EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Chris Patten told the mourners.

“She loved the world, and was loved by the world,” he said, adding: “The most beautiful symphonies are sometimes those left unfinished.”

On the main marble staircase at the front of the hall, a picture of a smiling Lindh clasping her hands in front of her face was placed on an easel. Powder-blue delphinium flowers, Lindh’s favorite color, lined the staircase.

One notable absence was US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the latter unable to attend because hurricane Isabel shut down Washington airport before his plane could take off for the ceremony.

Swedish songstress Eva Dahlgren opened yesterday’s service with her song “An Angel in the Room”, followed by a speech by Prime Minister Goeran Persson, who appointed Lindh foreign minister in 1998.

“Anna Lindh is no longer with us. That idea still feels so foreign, so difficult to accept. She lives on so strongly in our memories,” he said.

“We have lost her, that is the way it is. And that realization hurts so terribly much.”

Persson recalled Lindh as an energetic young woman with her jacket flapping in the wind and a knapsack slung over her shoulder. Always on the run, with her mobile phone in one hand and gesturing wildly in protest with the other.

“And there was always that snappy comment and that big rolling laugh,” he said.

Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, who grew up in Sweden and who accompanied Lindh on her last euro referendum campaign stop before her death, placed an olive sprig by her portrait.

Lindh’s friend and colleague, Swedish EU Commissioner Margot Wallstroem, addressed Lindh’s two sons, Filip, 9, and David, 13, saying: “You had the best mom ... You were always in her thoughts.”

“No matter how hard this feels, the grief will give way and Anna will live on. You can continue to talk to her, because her voice lives on inside you,” she said.

Speaking before the ceremony on Swedish Radio, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook said he would remember Lindh for her “great warmth and personality”.

“It’s hard to believe that the great warmth she had is extinguished,” he said, describing her as a “formidable politician” and “a voice for Europe”.

Following the service, some 30 current and former foreign ministers attended a reception at Sweden’s Foreign Ministry.