'All I want is peace'

The father of slain teenager Michael Brown has requested peace on the day of his son's funeral.

"Tomorrow all I want is peace," Michael Brown Sr. told hundreds of people gathered in St. Louis' largest city park on Sunday.

"Can you please, please take a day of silence so we can lay our son to rest," he said, adding that he and the 18-year-old's Brown's mother appreciated the support provided by the community.

The murder of the black unarmed teenager by a white police officer on August 9 has sparked weeks of protests - sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful - in Ferguson, in the US state of Missouri and reignited a national debate on racial tension and police brutality.

Though protests have become calm in recent days, Brown's funeral, which is scheduled to take place at 10 o'clock am local time (1500 UTC), is to be held under heavy police surveillance. It is to be held in the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist church, which can provide seating for up to 5,000 people.

Among those attending the funeral are to be prominent civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton. On Sunday, he told NBC's Meet the Press: "We must turn this moment into a movement to really deal with the underlying issues of police accountability and what is and is not allowable by police, and what citizens ought to be moving toward."

sb/pfd (AFP, Reuters)