World mourns Thatcher

A book of remembrance is opened at the Grantham Museum, in northern England, yesterday, the town where former British PM Margaret Thatcher was born. Photo: AFP

Combative and determined to get her way, Margaret Thatcher divided opinion down the middle in life - and in death.
Many leaders lauded Thatcher for her steely determination to modernize Britain's industrial landscape, even at the cost of strikes and riots, and to stand beside the United States as the west triumphed in the Cold War versus the Soviet Union. Others saw a pitiless tyrant who preferred conflict to compromise.
Yet virtually all, friend and foe alike, could agree on one overarching point expressed Monday by British Prime Minister David Cameron: The Iron Lady, he said, was "a great Briton."
As flags at Buckingham Palace, Parliament and across the United Kingdom were lowered to half-staff, the palace said Queen Elizabeth II would send a private message of sympathy to the family of the 87-year-old conservative icon.
Government officials began preparations for a London funeral with military honors at St Paul's Cathedral, though no date was fixed, followed by a private cremation.
"As our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds," Cameron said in Madrid. He cut short his trip to Spain and canceled a visit to France to return to London for the funeral preparations.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said many Americans "will never forget her standing shoulder to shoulder with President (Ronald) Reagan, reminding the world that we are not simply carried along by the currents of history. We can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will."
In Poland, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said his country should erect a statue of the British leader. In a tweet he praised Thatcher as "a fearless champion of liberty, stood up for captive nations, helped free world win the Cold War."
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who ousted the Conservative Party from power seven years after Thatcher's resignation, conceded that Thatcher had been right to challenge labor union power - the traditional bedrock for Blair's own Labour Party.
Falklands lawmaker Mike Summers said Thatcher was "one of very few political leaders who could have mounted the expedition she mounted in 1982 to restore our freedom, and from a Falkland Islands perspective she will be forever remembered for that."
Britain's pop culture icons past and present also sounded off about the woman who dominated the British political landscape through the 1980s. Many noted her inspirational role to women, even though Thatcher herself famously eschewed feminism and rarely promoted women herself.