A couple days after my post, I upgraded to SuSE 9.3m so now I have Kopete.
BUT
I have had nonstop problems with it.. only that it completely freezes the OS. It happened three times, all when Kopete was running, so I switched to GAIM, and no longer have that problem :/
rudi_m, if you happen to have Kopete crash your system, let me know. Curious if it's just me or not :/