404 error with .htaccess and mod_rewrite

I tried every possible way to get mod_rewrite working in openSUSE 11.3, but still no luck.
Followed the exact tutorial to enable mod_rewrite.
Enable mod_rewrite Apache 2.0 rewrite module on SuSE Linux - enarion.net

While having this piece of code in .htaccess:

Options +FollowSymlinks
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /links/
rewriterule ^user/(^-]+)-(^&]+)\.html$ /user.php?id=$1&name=$2 [L]
</IfModule>

And this in user.php:

<?php
	echo "User test page<br>";
	echo "User id: ".$_GET"id"]."<br>"; 
	echo "User name: ".$_GET"name"];
?>

I get 404 error which says that object not found. Did some modification with RewriteBase, but still the same.

Changed AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All, and restarted the server but still the same.
The url i process is like, which does not work:
links/user/1234-apache_mod_rewrite.html
while this works:
links/user.php?id=1234&name=apache_mod_rewrite

Also this might be helpful:

lsof | grep mod_rewrite
httpd2-pr 3167       root  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 3169     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 3171     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 3172     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 3173     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 3174     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 6584     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 6597     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
httpd2-pr 6598     wwwrun  mem       REG                8,5       64744     661682 /usr/lib64/apache2/mod_rewrite.so

Am i missing some thing to get it working?
Thanks