Sultan Billed as Grinch by Telegraph

The Telegraph ran the story "Sultan Ruins Christmas in Oman" today, regarding the slide of the Gulf Cooperation Council summit from late-November to the holiday timeframe. The Royal Diwan sent out notice to the leading hotels that Christmas bookings must be cleared out for the summit attendees, evidently leading to some disgruntled British holiday travelers. Unfortunately, the article was mute on why the summit was slid. While I can understand the traveler's anger, Oman's hosting of the GCC summit is no trivial matter. Oman needs to get the reasons for this change out into the presses in order to mitigate the bad PR and its effect on the tourism industry. I haven't had a chance to research the reason for the slide. Any insight?