BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sitting in his spacious office on the second floor of the Grand Serail in the heart of Beirut, Prime Minister Najib Mikati told me with obvious enthusiasm that the Kuwaiti authorities had informed him that around a dozen planes full of tourists would arrive at the Beirut airport daily. For a period of more than a week, these airplanes would bring in Kuwaitis coming to spend an official ten-day holiday in Lebanon.
Mikati, who had moved from the world of business and finance to politics, explained how he had asked the minister of tourism to take special care of these tourists since they are the vanguard of Gulf tourists visiting Lebanon, after a near boycott from other Gulf countries for political reasons masked with security pretexts.
