I'm facing the exact same situation.
I've got Suse 8.2, KDE 3.1.1 .
I also grabbed Kopete 0.7.3 - the RPM hosted at SuSE's website.
Each time I configure an account, and then hit Finish, the Kopete program immediately ends & disappears.
I don't know how to fix it, but maybe somebody here can help?
SuSE has a .7.4 RPM for SuSE 9, but not 8.2. Possibly the .7.4 version fixes this, and we should install it from source?
For that matter, I cannot find a Kopete changelog, or list of fixes in each version, anywhere. Is there one?
Thanks,
Steve