DAMASCUS, Syria — Pallbearers in scarlet berets and combat fatigues bore the body of Syrian President Hafez Assad through streets thronged with weeping, chanting mourners on Tuesday, a day of funeral ceremonies fraught with national grief and filled with political portents.
As hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians bade Assad an overwhelmingly emotional farewell, world leaders and other dignitaries paid solemn tribute to the late president, whose body lay in state for hours at the elaborate white-marble People's Palace, set on a Damascus hillside.
Later, the coffin, wrapped in the red-black-and-white Syrian flag, was taken by motorcade to a military airport outside Damascus and flown to the port town of Latakia for a final journey back to Assad's boyhood village, Qardaha, in northwest Syria. As the plane taxied toward takeoff, a black mourning flag could be seen fluttering from the cockpit window.
In an enormous funeral procession that snaked through the capital's streets to the palace, Assad's son and designated heir, Bashar, was flanked by Syria's defense minister, a symbol of the key support Syria's powerful military has thrown behind him.
Young and politically untested, the 34-year-old Bashar was meeting for the first time some of those leaders paying respects to his father, who had ruled Syria with an iron fist for three decades before his death Saturday at age 69.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright bowed her head briefly before the casket and then conferred privately with Bashar for about 20 minutes. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, once a bitter enemy of the elder Assad, saluted before the coffin, then kissed Bashar, clasping his hand and speaking intently for a few moments.
The United States has listed Assad's Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, criticized its human rights record and been frustrated at delays in the Israeli-Syrian peace talks it has tried to mediate. But Albright said Monday that "it's totally appropriate that we pay our respects to a historic figure."
The younger Assad was warmly greeted as well by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and French President Jacques Chirac.
Although Syria's official hierarchy has given Bashar Assad its blessing, it remained to be seen whether he could hold his own in the unforgiving political milieu of Syria and the Middle East — and how the leadership change in hard-line, isolated Syria might affect prospects for a comprehensive peace.
Even amid the mourning, regional politics took center stage. Syria used the occasion to trumpet the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon three weeks ago after a long campaign by the Shiite Muslim guerrillas of Hezbollah to drive them out, and to underscore its hopes of regaining the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
When Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah arrived at the palace where Assad lay in state, the announcer on Syria's state-run TV said, "Thank God you saw the south (of Lebanon) liberated . . . . We will liberate our Golan, God willing, because . . . the banner has been transferred to the faithful young man" — referring to Bashar Assad.
Israel, with whom Syria technically remains at war, was not invited to send a delegation to the funeral, though some Israeli Arab lawmakers attended. In Jerusalem, even the fact that the lawmakers were allowed to cross into Syria from Israel was read as a sign of potential warming, since the two nations have no ties.
On the streets of Damascus, mourners surged along the cortege route, waving portraits of both Assads, some fainting in the scorching heat. Soldiers handed out water to spectators, while ambulances stood by along the procession route.
For ordinary Syrians, the loss of the only president many had ever known sparked a ritual outpouring of grief that at times seemed staged, at other times almost unbearably heartfelt.
"I would rather I died and the president was still alive," said 67-year-old Mohammed al-Rifai Ali Masri. Young men bared their chests and in a gesture characteristic of Shiite Islam, ripped at their flesh with knives.