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THE SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE SHULTZ, having said he would not visit the Middle East, has changed his mind and is now on a ten-day tour of Middle East countries. The announced purpose is to finalise a Lebanon-Israel agreement and to try to revive President Ronald Reagan's peace plan. The Secretary of State's visit is also a demonstration that America is not deterred from initiatives in the region by such outrages as the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. The Shultz trip is to take in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and possibly Syria.

SULTAN QABOOS BIN SAID began his four-day state visit to the United States on 11 April, having already concluded an official visit to Jordan and a private stay in Britain. The Sultan's tour, on which he is accompanied by four senior ministers including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yousef al Alawi, is not altogether a purely formal event and signifies the Sultanate's move into a wider international arena. In Britain the Sultan was on familiar territory. He took the salute at the graduating ceremony at Sandhurst, Britain's leading military academy which the Sultan himself attended and where Omanis still come for military training.

There is clearly a great sense of relief at the British Foreign Office that the matter of the Arab League delegation has finally been resolved and that normal relations can be resumed with the Gulf states. Indeed, the choice of King Hussein as leader of the delegation could not have suited Whitehall better, since he is clearly a central figure in the present attempts to save the Reagan Plan from oblivion, and he is also the one Arab leader with whom the British feel they have a real understanding.

THE SEVENTH NON-ALIGNED CONFERENCE in New Delhi, attended by all the Middle East states except Israel, has come to its inconclusive end. The gathering of a hundred nations - some two thirds of the total membership of the United Nations - spent almost as much time in trying to resolve procedural wrangles as it devoted to the production of answers to the issues of which the Movement is seized.

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION has said it is 'optimistic' about the prospects for resuming expanded Middle East peace negotiations, following the Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in Algiers.

IRAN'S ANTICIPATED OFFENSIVE in the Gulf war began earlier this month; not in the region near Basra as some military observers expected, but in the Misan province with the town of Al Amarah as the apparent objective, some 200 miles south-east of the capital.

Arab hopes of even the beginnings of a general Middle East peace settlement can only be fulfilled if and when an acceptable solution to the situation in Lebanon is brought about. The Fez peace plan, the Reagan initiative, the various Arab diplomatic and political efforts, all hinge on events and developments in the Lebanon. In this special issue, Newsletters gives an appraisal of the key issues, with on-the-spot reports from the Lebanon and from exclusive interviews with senior Lebanese officials.

THE COMPARATIVE QUIET ON THE IRAQ-IRAN BATTLEFRONT is in direct contrast to the high level of diplomatic activity being generated from Baghdad. Spurred on by Iran's continued refusal to come to a negotiated peace except on Iran's unacceptable terms and looking to a not-so-distant spring when Iran might resume its military offensive, Iraq is working hard to bolster its political defences and obtain increased external support.

FOR THE ARAB STATES OF THE GULF, 1982 began with a sense of unease and uncertainty. The reverberations of the uncovering of a subversive plot in Bahrain, allegedly of Iranian inspiration, caused all the countries of the region to look apprehensively at their individual and collective internal security; a series of bilateral security agreements were quickly concluded between Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Co-operation Council states - with the exception of Kuwait.

THERE NEVER WAS ANY CO-ORDINATION in the various political moves, initiated in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to structure a lasting Middle East peace. There is an American 'initiative' from President Reagan, an Arab peace plan agreed at the Fez summit, the late Mr. Brezhnev's scheme and a joint Egyptian-French design; all propounded as the solution for an overall Middle East peace settlement. Although these proposals express an ultimate common aim, they differ substantially as to the means by which it is to be reached and, even, as to its final political shape.

WHILST THE POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT centres on the activities of the seven-man Arab peace committee, quiet progress is being made towards the restoration of Egypt to the Arab ranks. Usama al Baz, the director of political affairs in the Egyptian President's office and a key figure in the Egyptian administration, has said that Egypt is ready to re-establish relations with Arab countries "at any time and without any condition".

IRAQ HAS ADMITTED A SETBACK in the renewed battles in the war with Iran. A week after Iran opened its latest offensive, Baghdad conceded that Iranian troops had penetrated Iraqi territory up to a distance of five kilometres. Iran claims their troops have pushed twice that distance into Iraq. Earlier, President Saddam Hussain told delegations attending the Baghdad International Trade Fair that the Iranian offensive had been 'crushed'.

THE TOP LEVEL ARAB LEAGUE DELEGATION has ended its series of high-level meetings in Washington, which included sessions with President Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz, having made some important clarifications of the overall Arab negotiating position regarding a Middle East peace settlement. The delegation, led by King Hassan of Morocco, and including the Arab League Secretary General and the foreign ministers of Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Algeria, were presenting, as Arab League Ambassador Clovis Haksoud put it, "for the first time, a collective peace plan endorsed by all the Arab states".

THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES (IISS), the esteemed London-based institute, has issued the latest edition of its yearbook "The Military Balance, '82-' 83". This gives an up-to-date listing of almost every nation's military capacity from statistics gathered from publicly available sources and from questionnaires sent to governments.

TEHRAN HAS MADE NO SECRET of its plans to renew the military assault on Iraq. Senior Iranian military commanders have been giving interviews on television and in the press, saying that the war has reached a decisive stage in which "we must engage the enemy on all fronts", and claiming that a renewal of the offensive is imminent.