ian flag, Hussein‘s coffin was borne from the Bab al-Salaam (Door of Peace) palace on the outskirts of Amman by six royal males, led by his young successor King Abdullah, 37, and 18-year-old Crown Prince Hamza. Hussein‘s American-born widow Queen Noor and other women of the Hashemite dynasty, all dressed in black with white headscarves, watched weeping as the men passed the coffin to eight military officers. It was placed on a military jeep laden with white flowers for a sombre journey through the cold, misty streets of the desert kingdom‘s capital, where tens of thousands of Jordanians waited for a last, fleeting glimpse of their monarch. Soldiers on duty saluted and onlookers waved, wept and wailed as the cortege passed the King Hussein Medical Centre where Hussein, who was 63, finally succumbed to lymphatic cancer 24 hours earlier. At the main royal palace compound, where Hussein‘s body was to be buried in a simple white shroud, leaders from more than 50 countries gathered to pay tribute to a pivotal force in the quest for Arab-Israeli peace. President Bill Clinton, accompanied by three former U.S. presidents and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, flew in from the United States to join dignitaries from across the globe. Some of them are sworn enemies but they were drawn together for the day to mark the passing of one of the 20th century‘s best-known statesmen. On the streets of Amman, tens of thousands of ordinary Jordanians stood to mourn their king. Many held black-trimmed posters of their dead monarch as recorded recitals from the Koran, the Moslem holy book, wafted from apartment buildings. Some sobbed, others slapped their faces in grief. Hussein‘s eldest son Abdullah succeeded him three hours after his death on Sunday and pledged to pursue his father‘s policies. Hussein was the Middle East‘s longest-serving leader. Proclaimed king at the age of 16 in 1952, he led his country through decades of war, upheaval and shifting alliances and to a landmark peace treaty with neighbouring Israel in 1994. Few of Jordan‘s 4.6 million people had known any other ruler. The world too was coming to terms with the loss of a man central to the U.S.-led drive to bring peace to the Middle East. Clinton called King Hussein a partner and friend. Abdullah, an army major-general, was named Hussein‘s heir in place of his long-serving uncle Hassan only two weeks ago. Untested as a political ruler in a region of ageing and ailing leaders, he inherits a kingdom sandwiched strategically between Israel and Iraq with a troubled economy and an undercurrent of dissent over peace with the Jewish state. Pledges of support for the new Hashemite monarch and of economic aid for Jordan accompanied the eulogies for Hussein. U.S. officials said Clinton would meet Abdullah after the funeral to begin building a relationship with the new king as close as the one Washington had with King Hussein. Hussein returned to Jordan last Friday after a final, futile visit to the United States for treatment of his cancer and had lain unconscious on life-support systems until his death.