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.