MATTERS OF PRIORITY

It is a fairly common custom throughout the Arab world for senior officials and civil servants to issue from time to time a bland report on the state of affairs pertaining to their particular responsibilities. Such reports are invariably laudatory in tone and often anodyne in content. They rarely, if ever, reveal anything new. The shrewd and efficient Secretary General of the GCC, Abdullah Bishara, was recently moved to remark to the Saudi daily, ''AI Youm" on the accomplishments of the Gulf Co-operation Council.