Thanks bram85 for your question.
I got the impression that Kopete would support audio as well as webcams from here:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/visualguide-3.5.php
It states 'With support for audio and video devices.....'
And it STILL strikes me as odd that webcam support would be included without audio support.
Please don't get me wrong - I know that this is free open source software and I am generally otherwise very pleased with how well linux in general and KDE in particular has developed.
There just seems to be an anomaly with this particular issue.
Regards,
Mike K.