Sultan Qaboos to miss Oman National Day

Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al-Said will not be in Oman for the national holiday to mark his 74th birthday on 18 November. In the absence of official detail about the medical condition which has kept him away from home for more than four months, much significance had been placed on whether or not he would return for the National Day, when he usually oversees a military parade in Muscat; the announcement by a frail-looking Qaboos that he would not come, in a 5 November televised address, has been widely read as a bad sign. “It has been the Almighty’s divine will that the anniversary coincides with a time when we are out of the country, for reasons which you know,” the sultan read from a statement. “Praise be to the Almighty, for he has realised good results for us, that require us to proceed with the medical programme in the period which follows.”