KUWAIT CITY: Tucked away in a quiet street off an expressway in Kuwait is a private collection of Arabic and Islamic artefacts that helped Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) find its feet in its early years.

Yesterday, President SR Nathan, on the third day of his state visit to Kuwait, toured the Tareq Rajab Museum.

Mr Tareq Rajab, 74, and his daughter-in-law, Singapore-born Leila Fonglin-Rajab, showed Mr Nathan the vast spread of exhibits.

They range from Islamic manuscripts written on vellum leaves, to displays of metal work and ceramics plus calligraphy that traces the development of Arabic script, going back as far as the 7th century.

At the end of his hour-long tour, an impressed Mr Nathan wrote in the guestbook that the visit was 'an education in calligraphy and its different origins and forms'.

It was through Mrs Fonglin-Rajab, 53, that the museum lent more than 100 exhibits to ACM for more than a decade.

ACM director Kenson Kwok told The Straits Times in an earlier phone interview that the long-term loan arrangement is coming to an end this year, now that the Singapore museum has amassed its own collection of Islamic artefacts.

He said ACM is in talks with another Kuwaiti family, the Al-Sabah family, to exhibit items from their collection of Islamic art.

The private collection features more than 25,000 works of Islamic arts spanning the 7th to 19th century. It includes Mughal jewellery that has been exhibited at places such as the Louvre in France.

Separately, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Zainul Abidin Rasheed and MPs Irene Ng and Fatimah Lateef visited Kuwait's Parliament, the National Assembly. They met its Speaker Jassem Mohamed Al-Khurafi, and discussed democracy and Singapore's experience in electing women into Parliament.

In 2005, Kuwait gave women the right to vote and stand as candidates in polls, but none of the 27 women who stood for elections in May this year was voted into the 50-seat National Assembly. The emirate has two appointed women ministers.