BEIJING, Feb 25 (AFP) - Patriarch Deng Xiaoping was given a sombre send off Tuesday in the Great Hall of the People across from a giant clock counting down the return of Hong Kong which he negotiated but was never to see.

The Chinese people, who had lined the streets of Beijing the day before to watch Deng's funeral cortege pass by, were all but excluded from any active participation in Tuesday's ceremony.

Instead, centre stage was taken by the government and Communist Party, as party chief and head of state Jiang Zemin read a lengthy eulogy before the 10,000 invited guests that took up all but 10 minutes of the official one-hour ceremony.

Sirens, factory, train and ship whistles sounded as the Chinese stopped in their tracks and paid their last respects to the man whose reforms brought them unheralded prosperity.

A grey winter's mist hung over Tiananmen Square as hundreds of cars and buses brought in the invited mourners who filed into the Great Hall for the ceremony, which was broadcast live around the country and throughout the world.

Deng, aged 92, died last Wednesday with express wishes that he would be cremated and his ashes scattered to the sea. He wanted none of the hysteria or grandiose ceremonies which surrounded the death in 1976 of predecessor Mao Zedong.

The funeral in the Great Hall brought him close one last time to the most potent symbols in the country the mausoleum containing Mao's embalmed body, the square itself where he ordered tanks to crush a student democracy movement in 1989, and the Hong Kong countdown clock.

His grieving family brought a personal human touch to the austere surroundings of the Great Hall, his weeping widow Zhuo Lin and wheelchair bound son Deng Pufang surrounded by other close relatives, all dressed in black.

Jiang Zemin led a procession of Communist Party grandees who paid their last respects to the family as the ceremony ended.

It was a second day in the glare of the television cameras for the reclusive Deng clan, who had been shown weeping and bending over Deng's body prior to cremation Monday.

Several thousand mourners gathered beneath the Tiananamen rostrum overlooking the square during the ceremony and then rushed into the vast concourse when it was reopened.

Their attempts to add to the day's mourning by laying flowers and unfurling pro-Deng banners were quickly halted by police, who bundled away several people.

The government has been anxious to prevent Deng's death triggering unrest, and unofficial gatherings had been banned for the funeral.

But even in the public square the displays were not all spontaneous.

A group of Tibetans appeared and started talking to foreign journalists, one of them saying "we came to express our grief over the death of our president."

As a crowd of onlookers gathered, the man introduced his parents and children.

"We love Deng Xiaoping for what he did for our homeland," he said as the group posed for photographs with foreign journalists without being troubled by police.

China "liberated" Tibet in 1951 in an operation masterminded by Deng. Its spiritual Dalai Lama fled in 1959 after a failed uprising and continues to campaign for the Tibetan cause.