Other graves in the cemetery including two occupied by Nobel Prize winners already enjoy this privilege

Other graves in the cemetery, including two occupied by Nobel Prize winners, already enjoy this privilege.This is the solution proposed by the Greens, the successors of the anarchic groups which sprung up in West Berlin in the 1960s. As custodians of the student rebellions of 1968, they have tabled a modest motion - three paragraphs in all - at the regional parliament. The proposal has had an explosive impact on the city's political life."A tomb of honour would be merely a symbolic gesture," explains Alice Strover, the motion's Green proposer. "An official honour bestowed by Berlin would serve as a gesture of reconciliation." Fat chance. Ms Strover attended Dutschke's funeral in 1979, but is too young to remember the mayhem wrought by the student leader in his heyday.Dutschke was shot in April 1968 by a right-wing house painter, allegedly unhinged by anti-revolutionary propaganda in the tabloid press. The Greens think Berlin should now pay homage to the ideals of the student uprising of 1968, thus making amends for the "lynching mood" whipped up by West Berlin's political masters at the time.

If the motion, supported by the Social Democrats and the East's Party of Democratic Socialism, goes through, the regional government will have to pay for the grave.But the mere suggestion of rendering any honour on Dutschke sends Berlin's largest coalition partner into a rage. "I don't think Berlin should pay for this," says Uwe Lehmann-Brauns, a Christian Democrat member of the regional assembly. His party runs the city in tandem with the Social Democrats, so that controversy over Dutschke's remains could have grave consequences for the stability of the administration."This honour is normally bestowed on someone who has done something for the city," Mr Lehmann-Brauns adds. "But Rudi Dutschke wanted to abolish parliamentary democracy. His slogan was: `Americans out of West Berlin.' If that had happened we would have been swallowed up by the Soviet Union within a year."Mr Lehmann-Brauns suggests that any number of left-wing foundations could renew the lease, as indeed could Dutschke's widow, Gretchen, who lives in the US. But Gretchen Dutschke is supporting the Green proposal, presumably because a "tomb of honour" would be a gateway for her deceased husband into the pantheon of eternal fame. Dutschke's grave in Dahlem would vie with the concrete slab of Karl Marx that draws tourists to Highgate cemetery.

The Greens, the arrivistes of Dutschke's "long march through the institutions", would at last have a monument of their own, and relics to worship.At St Anne's, officials point out that the lease does not run out until the end of the year, and can easily be renewed by a relative willing to pay a few hundred marks. They place flowers on the grave every day, hoping that the dust will settle soon The motion comes up for a vote in May.. "Nobody's crazy enough to think of escape," says the lawyer for the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. "They just small-talk." His client is one of the boys of "Bomber Wing" who get to see each other for about an hour twice a week in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, known as Supermax. The prisoners are allowed into an exercise space to roam within the confines of individual wire enclosures, three yards from each other, and can be neighbourly. But what is judged as neighbourly is hard to imagine: the other "boys" are the "Unabomber", Ted Kaczynski, and Ramzi Yousef, bomber of the World Trade Centre. In those circumstances, the repartee is unlikely to be sparkling.

But the proximity of flesh-and-blood company, even theirs, appears to be in demand. The lawyer for Luis Felipe, the boss of the notorious New York street gang, the Latin Kings, has successfully requested to have his client placed among the bombers.His lawyer, Lawrence Feitell, doubts they will become chums. But, he argues: "In their universe they are the last four people on earth." Some might say they deserve each other.. China has come up with an inventive wheeze to bring in more tourists.