The announcement came as Denmark and Russia formally agreed to go ahead with plans to transfer the ashes of the tsarina, the Danish-born wife of Russian Tsar Alexander III, to Saint Petersburg in September 2006.

Known in Russia as Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna but born Princess Dagmar, the daughter of Danish King Christian IX will be buried beside her husband in Saint Petersburg's Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Danish Queen Margrethe, the re-burial will take place on September 26, 2006, 140 years after she first arrived in Russia to marry the then-heir to the Russian tsarist throne.

The re-burial follows a request from the Romanov family to have her re-enterred in the family tomb.

The last wish of the empress-dowager before she died in 1928 at the age of 81 was to be returned to Russia, whence she fled after the Bolshevik revolution in which her son, Tsar Nicholas II, and his family were murdered by the revolutionaries.

The tsarina, who returned to Denmark in 1919 after escaping from the Red Army in the Crimea in the wake of the Russian revolution, is currently buried in a crypt near her father in a chapel of the royal cathedral of Roskilde, 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Copenhagen.

The transfer to Russia, which was originally scheduled to have taken place this September, has been subject to major delay.

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