Cameron calls for reflection before deciding Thatcher memorial

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday urged for "time to reflect" before deciding on the most fitting way to honour the memory of former leader Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87.

"We should give ourselves some time to reflect on it, to make sure that we make the right decision," he told Sky News.

Cameron said there would eventually be many monuments to the "extraordinary leader" and did not rule out London mayor Boris Johnson's proposal to erect a statue in London's iconic Trafalgar Square.

Defence minister Philip Hammond called the suggestion "very appropriate", but critics pointed out the square was the site of pitched battles in 1990 between police and protesters opposed to Thatcher's poll tax plans.

"I don't think it is appropriate to have a statue of Margaret Thatcher on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square," said Len Duvall, the leader of the Labour group on the London assembly

"She was a significant figure, but she was a divisive figure. I would argue that Margaret Thatcher did great harm to many people in London, and to place a statue of her at the site of the Poll Tax riots, which symbolised just how divisive she was, would be crass triumphalism."

Johnson has also suggested that a new London airport, should it become realised, be named after the "Iron Lady".

A spokesman for Cameron's office said that proposals to rename the capital of the Falkland Islands to "Port Thatcher" in recognition of her actions against Argentina's 1982 invasion "was up to the people of the Falklands".

There is already a statue honouring Thatcher in the Houses of Parliament. At the 2007 unveiling, the recipient said: "I would prefer steel, but bronze will do. It will not rust."

Elsewhere, left-wing politicians on Paris city council slammed proposals to name a street in the French capital after Thatcher, suggesting instead that one be named after IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands.

City councillor Jerome Dubus of the right-wing UMP party has said he will propose naming a street after Thatcher, the Conservative British ex-prime minister who died on Monday, at an upcoming city council meeting.

But councillor Ian Brossat, of the Communist-backed Left Front, denounced the move and said the city would do better to honour Sands, the Northern Irish prisoner who died in a 1981 hunger strike while Thatcher was in office.