World leaders pay last respects to King Hasan II
World leaders pay last respects to King Hasan II
RABAT (Agencies): World leaders joined Morocco's masses on Sunday in bidding a last farewell to King Hassan II, with his eldest son Mohammed VI succeeded him as the Arab world's youngest leader.
Hassan, 70, a key ally of the West in the Mediterranean region and the Arab world, died on Friday after 38 years on the throne, officially of a heart attack following an acute lung infection.
But one medical source, who requested anonymity, told AFP on Sunday that the king was already clinically dead when he was admitted to Avicenne civilian hospital in Rabat.
Hassan was to be buried in the royal mausoleum in Rabat, alongside his father King Mohammed V, whose death in February 1961 triggered scenes of mass hysteria in this North African state.
The funeral services began shortly after 1:00 p.m. (8 p.m. Jakarta time), and continued all afternoon with some 40 foreign VIPs in attendance, led by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Others on hand included French President Jacques Chirac, Britain's Prince Charles, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Jordan's King Abdallah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Clinton met Barak and Arafat at a three-way meeting on Sunday ahead of the funeral of King Hassan, the White House said.
A White House spokesman said the meeting at the Royal Palace lasted about five minutes and described it as "animated". It was the first such meeting since Barak took office on July 6 promising to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process.
Clinton also met Mubarak privately at the palace shortly before the funeral process began. He also met briefly with Chirac, King Abdullah and Israeli President Ezer Weizman, among others.
In Damascus, officials said later that the Syrian delegation to Rabat would be headed by Vice President Zuheir Masharkah. No official reason was given, but some analysts suggested Assad was not ready to meet the new Israeli leader, yet did not want to be seen as snubbing a chance to make a peace gesture by attending Hassan's funeral and avoiding Barak.
Barak has declared he wants to conclude a peace accord with Syria within 15 months that could see the return to Syria of most if not all of the Golan Heights, which were seized in the 1967 war.
Security was tight in Rabat's city center on Sunday, with police in blue uniforms and soldiers with carbines slung over their shoulders deployed every two to three meters along the cortege route.
Here and there small groups of Moroccans paraded through the streets, carrying photographs of the late king, their loud chants of mourning for Hassan echoing off the whitewashed buildings.
But all shops were closed, barring a few bakeries, motor traffic was very light, and most people carried on life as usual.
Sunday's ceremonies began with the guests paying their respects at the coffin of the late king in a reception room in the palace in Rabat, before the funeral cortege left for the mausoleum.
Following the funeral, the new king -- Mohammed VI, who turns 36 next month -- will receive the condolences of the guests.
Meanwhile, Barak held an unprecedented meeting on Sunday with Bouteflika on the sidelines of King Hassan II's funeral in Rabat, a senior Israeli official said.
It was the first public meeting between an Israeli leader and an Algerian president.
In Jerusalem, newspapers reported on Sunday that Israel's Mossad intelligence agency secretly helped Morocco's late King Hassan II battle his domestic and foreign rivals in the 1960s, at one point sending him 100 tanks, The Maariv newspaper said the chief of the Mossad at the time, Rafi Eitan, visited Morocco in 1962 when the newly enthroned Hassan faced army mutineers and assassination attempts.
Eitan agreed to provide Hassan's regime with 100 tanks needed for a border conflict with Algeria, the newspaper said in the report published two days after King Hassan died of a heart attack.
Maariv and the Haaretz newspaper said Hassan allowed the Mossad to set up a station in Rabat as part of the cooperation.
In 1965, Maariv said, Mossad agents reportedly played a role in the kidnap-murder of Hassan's political arch-rival Mahdi Ben Barka.