World leaders bid farewell to King Hassan II

RABAT -- World leaders joined Morocco's masses yesterday to bid farewell to King Hassan II, in a moving state funeral that opened the way for the monarch's son Mohamed to become the youngest leader in the Arab world.

US President Bill Clinton and a host of international VIPs gathered here on a hot mid-summer afternoon to pay last respects to the 70-year-old king who made peace with Israel, yet ruled his own subjects with an iron hand.

Huge crowds lined the main streets here for a glimpse of Hassan's coffin, which was covered in an Islamic green shroud with gold Koranic inscriptions and borne on a well-polished open army truck.

Leading the truck was an ornate red carriage, pulled by four white horses, symbolising the authority of Morocco's all-powerful royals in this nation of some 30 million people.

Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac and Jordan's King Abdallah were seen walking solemnly behind the coffin.

Inside the palace, Hassan's body lay in state in a small room off a grand hallway. The VIP mourners stopped at the doorway, bowed respectfully, then moved on.

The three-kilometre procession was to conclude at a mausoleum where Hassan's father King Mohamed V, Morocco's first head of state after independence from France and Spain in 1956, is buried.

The funeral was presided over by Hassan's heir, the new King Mohamed VI, who turns 36 on August 21.

He was expected to be urged by Clinton and others -- including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- to support the quest for Middle East peace.

Hopes that Barak would meet Syrian President Hafez al-Assad on the sidelines here were dashed when a delegation led by Vice-President Zuheir Masharkah turned up.

But there was a diplomatic breakthrough when Barak met with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Barak's security adviser Danny Yatom told Israeli television.

Hassan, 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.

The king was already clinically dead when he was admitted to Avicenne civilian hospital here. Doctors struggled in vain for hours to revive his heart and breathing, a source said.

Security was tight in the city centre here yesterday, with police and soldiers deployed every two to three metres along the cortège route.

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.

Mohamed appeared briefly in public on Saturday, mingling with some of the mourners outside the royal palace, raising hopes that he will rule with a lighter touch than his father, who brooked little dissent.

Little seen in public as a crown prince, the French-educated Mohamed inherits a nation that is saddled with political and economic uncertainty, highlighted by chronic unemployment -- estimated at well over 30 percent.

Last year Morocco, ravaged by a war against Islamic extremists, ranked 125th on the United Nations' development index, behind Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. -- Sapa-AFP