Kuwaiti Ambassador to Talk Business in Newport : Contracts: The diplomat and Rep. Cox will be part of a six-member panel outlining reconstruction priorities.

Republican congressman Christopher Cox will join Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States in Newport Beach today in a panel discussing business opportunities for reconstruction work in Kuwait.

This will be Ambassador Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah’s first visit to Orange County since Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait in late February. An earlier meeting scheduled at Orange Coast College on March 13 was abruptly canceled because of the ambassador’s “overwhelming workload” involving reconstruction.

Because Iraqi forces have seriously damaged the emirate’s power plants, water supply and communication systems, it is difficult for foreign contractors to reach authorities in Kuwait to discuss business proposals, Cox said, so most reconstruction contracts are yet to be signed.

“What I’m trying to do is to get the ambassador in direct contact with Orange County firms in a more friendly environment conducive to do business,” Cox said by telephone Thursday from his Newport Beach office.

When the ambassador made his first trip to the emirate since the war last month, Cox was part of an accompanying group of business executives and government officials from Kuwait and the United States. The group included Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher and Fluor Daniel Inc.’s president, Gerald Glenn.

Cox said today’s hourlong briefing will include a six-member panel outlining the Kuwaiti government’s priorities in awarding contracts for reconstruction projects.

Other panel members scheduled are Col. Charles Thomas, Army Corps of Engineers; Maryavis Bokal, trade specialist, Commerce Department in Santa Ana; Fluor’s Glenn, and Susan Lentz , executive director of World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County.

The panel will describe the kind of equipment and services the Kuwaiti government needs that Orange County companies could supply, he said.

The panel will also review problems that contractors could face, how they could be resolved and how to replace such services as civil engineering, rehabilitation of buildings and road repair.

The morning briefing at the Le Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach is free to the public, but the luncheon meeting will cost $15 for students, $25 for members and $35 for the public.

The briefing will be followed by a seminar sponsored by Lentz’s trade group on the same subjects. Sorton Jones, a partner at the international law firm of Graham & James in San Francisco, will discuss the legal pitfalls of working in Kuwait. He will be joined by Daniel C. Montano, chairman of VTN Corp., an Orange-based engineering company that built Entertainment City in Kuwait, the only amusement park in the Mideast.