The burial ceremony is expected to take place on September 26, 2006, according to the decree.
The president approved the working group's makeup. Culture and Mass Communications Minister Alexander Sokolov is expected to head the group.
The group is composed of Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, officials from the Russian Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, the presidential administration and the Russian Orthodox Church.
Empress Maria Fyodorovna (nee Princess Dagmara of Denmark, daughter of King Christian IX and Queen Louise) was born in Copenhagen in 1847. She married Russian Tsar Alexander III (1845-1894) and gave birth to six children, including Russia's last emperor, Nicolas II.
The empress spent 52 years in Russia. She lived through the chaos of the Bolshevik revolution and fled to Denmark in 1919 when her nephew, King George VI of England, sent a ship to take the empress from the Crimea. Empress Maria died in Copenhagen in 1928 and was buried in the Danish royal family's vault in Roskilde Cathedral.
The Romanov family buried their members and their families in Peter and Paul's Cathedral in Petersburg. When Alexander III died, a place for his widow was reserved next to his tomb.
