The Russian Orthodox Church has decided that its leader, Patriarch Aleksy the Second, will not take part in a ceremony next month to bury the remains of the country's last tsar -- shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

A statement issued by the church leadership said no senior clergy would take part in the ceremony because of doubts about the identity of the remains.

A government commission ordered the burial earlier this year after it formally declared that bones found in the city of Yekaterinburg in 1991 were those of Tsar Nicholas the Second and his family.

Correspondents say the latest announcement brings to an end months of deliberations in which the government pressured the church to officiate over the ceremony.