Did you downloaded the new kopete version from SuSE webpage or from somewhere else?
Basically what the page says is to create a file (or edit the file if it already exist) called "kderc" on directory "/etc" with lines that say
[Directories]
prefixes=/opt/kde3
Use "/opt/kde3" if kopete and all its files were installed there, if not locate where kopete was installed and replace "/opt/kde3" with the path where kopete was installed like
"/usr/local" or something like that, or else download the kopete rpm created by SuSE from
here