Death Of A Peacemaker

He was a little king with regal charm and a warrior's confident poise, reports CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth. On Sunday, Jordan's King Hussein bin Talal died after a long bout with cancer. The 63-year-old monarch was the longest serving head of state in the world at the time of his death.

A Muslim who traced his roots to the prophet Mohammed, Hussein was the only king more than two generations of Jordanians ever knew. He was schooled in Britain as a soldier, and put on the throne as a teen-age boy.

He was also a survivor of assassination plots, coup attempts, and the lethal rivalries of Mideast politics.

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Key dates in the history of Jordan's King Hussein 1935:I Hussein born in Amman on Nov. 14 to Prince Talal bin Abdullah and Princess Zein al-Sharaf bint Jamil. 1951: Hussein witnesses assassination of his grandfather, King Abdullah, in Jerusalem by a Palestinian nationalist angered by Jordan's annexation of the West Bank. 1952: Hussein proclaimed king after father abdicates because of mental illness. 1956: Hussein survives coup attempt by senior army officials loyal to Egyptian Arab nationalist. 1967: Hussein loses West Bank and Jerusalem to Israel during the Six Day War. 1970: Jordan army troops loyal to Hussein put down a revolt by Palestinian guerrillas, who had become a state-within-a-state in Jordan and demanded the King's ouster. 1988: Hussein renounces rights to the West Bank but retains role as guardian of Jerusalem's Muslim holy places, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. 1990-91: Hussein upsets ties with West by remaining neutral in the Gulf War because of his country's economic ties to Iraq. 1994: Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty. 1998: The king has his second battle with cancer. He had surgery on a cancerous kidney in 1992, and in the summer of 1998 began six months of chemotherapy of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. 1999: Hussein returned to Jordan in mid-January but was ordered back to the U.S. by doctors for more treatment a week later. Changes line of succession, naming his son, Abdullah as crown prince to replac his brother, Hassan. Feb.2, 1999: Hussein has bone marrow transplant at the Mayo Clinic. Feb.4, 1999: Doctors say the transplant operation has failed, Hussein flies back home to Jordan. Copyright 1999 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

"Many in this world have written me off, but I believe in God and I believe one lives one's destiny," he said at the time.

It was Hussein's destiny to lead Jordan through 47 years of turmoil. His decision to join the Arab attack on Israel in 1967 cost him a third of his kingdom: the West Bank and Jerusalem.

He called the Jewish State "a base of an armed aggressive movement in the heart of the Arab land."

But at times, King Hussein also felt threatened from within Jordan. In 1970, radical Palestinians challenged his reign during the Black September uprising. He survived, expelling Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization from the country.

To the outside world he began to be seen as a symbol of Arab moderation -- sometimes, too moderate.

King Hussein wouldn't join the Gulf War coalition against Iraq, and it cost him good will in the West. But he endured.

Jordan has no oil wealth. Its greatest strength was te security Hussein provided. At home, he earned respect for integrity and hard work.

But he played hard, too. He was a jet setter who flew his own jet. He was divorced twice and widowed once. His fourth marriage, the last, was to an American woman born Lisa Halby, who became Queen Noor.

His legacy will be in the risk he finally took to seek partnership with a longtime enemy - in the peace treaty he signed with Israel almost four years ago.

When he eulogized Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Hussein could have been writing his own epitaph:

"So many live and so many inevitably die," he said. "This is the will of God. This is the way of all."

But those who are fortunate and lucky in life, those who are great, he said, are those who leave something behind.

Reported by Richard Roth
©1998, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved