Official accords, unofficial strains.

There were no large surprises from the published deliberations of the recent summit meeting of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh. The council's endorsement of the Saudi Arabian proposals for a Middle East peace settlement was an entirely expected outcome. But the council did not, as had been hoped by Saudi Arabia, agree to present the plan on a collective basis to the Arab Summit meeting in Fez. Instead the Gulf members merely "asked" Saudi Arabia to table the plan at the forthcoming Morocco meeting. This is less than the open support Saudi Arabia wanted and it appears that the Gulf States - with Kuwait in the vanguard - do not wish to be seen as attempting to impose acceptance of the plan on the rest of th Arab states.