Tributes f low for McCain
Flags were flying at half mast over the White House and US Capitol on Sunday in honour of John McCain, the Vietnam War hero and twotime presidential candidate known for a legendary temper but whose personal courage and insistence on treating even his foes with respect earned him near-universal admiration. McCain died on Saturday, four days shy of his 82nd birthday, following a year-long battle with an aggressive brain cancer.
He leaves a wife, Cindy, and seven children, three from an earlier marriage.
He will lie in state in the US Capitol – an honour accorded only a few notable Americans, including John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and civil rights icon Rosa Parks – as well as in the Arizona Capitol, the state he represented for 35 years.
His funeral is expected to take place in the National Cathedral, the massive Gothic structure overlooking Washington, before he is laid to rest according to his wishes at the Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Maryland.
Former presidents George W Bush, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat – his successful rivals in, respectively, the 2000 and 2008 elections – are to speak at the funeral, the New York Times reported.
Media reports earlier this year said the senator had expressly asked that President Donald Trump not be invited. Instead, Vice-President Mike Pence is expected to attend.
As tributes poured in from the US and abroad, Trump said simply that he sent his "deepest sympathies and respect" to the McCain family.
Trump's wife, Melania, his daughter Ivanka and Pence saluted the senator's service to the nation.
Paying tribute to his 2008 election opponent, former president Barack Obama described McCain as an idealist and said there had been something noble about their political battles.
Republican Arizona governor Doug Ducey was expected to appoint a member of his own party to succeed McCain.
Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s when, as a naval aviator, he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during more than five years as a prisoner.
He was edged out by George W Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but became his party’s White House candidate eight years later, losing to Obama.
Defence secretary James Mattis saluted McCain as a figure who “always put service to the nation before self”.
McCain denounced Trump for, among other things, his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders the senator described as foreign tyrants. “Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity,” McCain said of Trump in his memoir, The Restless Wave, which was released in May.
In Germany, foreign minister Heiko Maas said McCain stood for an America “that is a reliable and close partner ... that takes strong responsibility for others and sticks to its values and principles”.
The EU ambassador to the US, David O’Sullivan, said McCain’s strong support for transatlantic co-operation should be followed as an example in strengthening EU-US ties and dealing with challenges ahead.
French President Emmanuel Macron called McCain a true American hero whose voice would be missed and British Prime Minister Theresa May said he embodied the idea of service over self.
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said he would be remembered both in Europe and America for his courage and character, and as a strong supporter of Nato.