Colin, Condi--Need Help? Ask the Celebs

This week, a new type of international diplomacy was trotted onto the world stage--and it wasn’t the negotiations between the U.S. and China over the midair collision of a U.S. spy plane and Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea.

Halfway around the globe, actor Kevin Costner met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro for hours, discussing, among other topics, Costner’s recent film, “13 Days,” which retells the story of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis.

“I shouldn’t be speaking for the president,” Costner’s spokesman, Stephen Rivers, told Reuters news service after the landmark powwow. “But [I will say that] he responded to the film very favorably, and we had a very interesting discussion afterward.”

Could this be just the beginning?

April 30: Actress Suzanne Somers meets with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to discuss ways in which Russian women, customarily depicted as perilously overweight, can benefit from Somers’ endorsed line of thigh-slimming exercise equipment. The four-hour talks break down when Russian apparatchik insist on the presence of additional envoys, specifically John Ritter and Don Knotts.

May 21: Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart confers with Somali warlords to discuss that nation’s ongoing famine, proposing the implementation of “imaginative, stretchable menus that don’t compromise tastiness.” At Stewart’s suggestion, they order an immediate air drop of 4 million amuse-bouches over the central part of the country. “It’s a good thing,” Stewart tells gathered media before meeting the Somali interior minister on the use of “sand art as the perfect centerpiece.”

June 24: Actors Jack Klugman and Tony Randall are summoned to the 38th Parallel by the recently united Kims of Korea--General Secretary Kim Jong Il of the North and President Kim Dae Jung of the South--to direct the leaders in a joint Pyongyang-Seoul dinner theater tour of “The Odd Couple.” Rehearsals end abruptly when the two Kims begin arguing over top billing.

July 17: A joint delegation led by animal activist and ageless game show host Bob Barker and former singing televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker travels to London to advise British Prime Minister Tony Blair on humane alternatives to destroying livestock infected with foot-and-mouth disease. Proposed solutions include instructing the fetid cattle on the joys of abstinence and reminding them that “just because you’re stricken with a hideously degenerative disease, that doesn’t mean you’re not a nice cow.”

Sept. 18: Florence Henderson flies to Bahrain to lobby Arab leaders for the inclusion of Wesson Oil in the OPEC alliance. Back in the U.S., ABC-TV executives, inspired by the event, immediately begin pre-production on the forthcoming special, “A Very Brady Ramadan.”

Oct. 4: Music and fashion impresario Sean “Puffy” Combs (a.k.a. P. Diddy) jets to the Balkans for closed-door meetings with detained Serbian war crimes suspect Slobodan Milosevic (a.k.a. S. Milo) to plot successful strategies for beating a rap. Assisting Combs are celebrity lawyer and inveterate rhymer Johnnie Cochran (“Slobo’s no bobo!”) as well as diplomatic attaches Vanilla Ice and Gary Coleman, who advise Milosevic on “life after exile.”

Oct. 25: A delegation of top American sight-gag comedians--led by Rip Taylor, Gallagher and Carrot Top--meet with international terrorist Osama bin Laden to implore the notorious revolutionary to stop his campaign of violence and instead consider “knockin’ ‘em dead with laughter.” The meeting abruptly derails when Bin Laden, a devout Muslim, ejects the funnymen from his hide-out after Taylor pulls a rubber pork chop from his pants.

Nov. 15: The cast of HBO’s hit show, “The Sopranos,” flies to Tel Aviv for a meeting with members of the Knesset to propose “a more persuasive diplomacy” in negotiating with the PLO. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tells the actors he will take their suggestions under advisement, but then confides his disappointment to his top aides. “Maybe I read the briefing papers wrong,” he confesses, “but weren’t we also supposed to meet with those shiksas from ‘Sex and the City?’ ”