DIPLOMATIC DIVERSIONS

A SHORT TIME AGO the Amir of Kuwait concluded a foreign tour which took in Turkey and some of the Soviet-bloc satellite countries. It was a most successful visit, by all accounts, and the Amir was accorded red-carpet treatment in the capitals he visited. The guards of honour and the brass bands which greeted the Amir in Eastern Europe were in addition to a proper protocol, an acknowledgement of a salient political fact. Kuwait, alone among the Gulf states and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council has long had formal diplomatic relations with the Eastern bloc countries and the significance of that solitary status would not have been lost on the Amir's hosts.