Rabat

Saddam Hussein executed a hero of the 1980-88 war with Iran last month to crush opposition within the military to his beleaguered regime, diplomats and travelers from Baghdad said Saturday. Other sources who recently were in the Iraqi capital said 30 more military officers were shot about the same time, apparently to head off a possible military coup. There was no immediate independent confirmation of either report, and it was not clear whether they were related.

When Ken Rabat saw a 2-year-old colt named Fast Forward running in New York last fall, he did a double-take. In the 1970s, Rabat owned a cheap, sore-legged horse named Fast Forward. "He was the third horse I ever owned," said Rabat, who lives in New Jersey. The Jockey Club in New York, which must approve the names of all thoroughbreds, has a long list of rules that apply.

Exiled former Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, suffering from advanced prostate cancer, checked into a Moroccan hospital after France refused to allow him entry for medical treatment, said his son, Nzanga Mobutu. A hospital official in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, said Mobutu checked into the hospital but refused to give any other information. Nzanga Mobutu said his father was "doing fine" and would return to the luxury hotel in Tangier where he has been staying.

A crowded overnight passenger express from the tourist city of Marrakesh was engulfed in flame Tuesday after a collision with a freight train loaded with volatile naphtha, killing at least 14 people, officials said. The official said at least 103 others were injured and that there were probably foreign tourists aboard the train, but he did not know their number or nationalities. Rescue workers said some passengers were asleep and were burned alive by the explosion. "It was a real inferno.

A much-delayed Arab summit is scheduled to take place in Morocco on July 3, the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad said Wednesday. It quoted senior diplomatic sources in Rabat as saying that Arab foreign ministers have also agreed to meet on June 23 to prepare an agenda for the two-day July summit. Arab League Secretary General Chedli Klibi toured eight Arab states last week to rally support for the proposed gathering, originally called for by Libya and Morocco to discuss the U.S.

Mobutu Sese Seko, shunned in death by the powers that once backed his despotic rule over Zaire, was laid to rest Saturday after a private Roman Catholic ceremony outside the Moroccan capital. Nearly 100 uniformed and plainclothes police kept journalists and onlookers 500 yards from the cemetery as mourners arrived in private cars. Mobutu's body was carried in a white ambulance.

Mark Covert, the men's and women's cross-country and track coach at Antelope Valley College, and Bobby Thomas, a former standout runner at Glendale College, will be inducted into the Mt. San Antonio College cross-country hall of fame today. Covert won the 1968 State cross-country title as a Valley College freshman and finished third in 1969. He also won the 1970 NCAA Division II cross-country title for Cal State Fullerton before finishing seventh in the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials in the marathon.

Morocco asked today to join the European Community, a move reflecting the North African country's concern for its farm exports to the bloc, but was promptly turned down. European foreign ministers said Morocco is ineligible. They cited the community's founding Treaty of Rome that allows only European states to become full members. The foreign ministers' Danish leader told Moroccan Foreign Minister Abdellatif Filali that the Arab country does not qualify for membership in the 12-nation bloc.

To hear the king tell it, opposition politicians are misguided novices who should just take their benevolent sovereign's advice. "My bitterness is that of the teacher who is not well understood by his pupils," King Hassan II said in a recent speech about the aftermath of last year's parliamentary elections. He is bitter about challenges to his right to choose the prime minister, the opposition's refusal to join the new government and the tendency to dismiss progress toward democracy in Morocco.