Diplomat doubles as Miss Manners.

• Position: Brief Article

It's summer at Buckingham Palace. The queen of England is having tea with 2,000 of her closest friends and not-so-chummy political acquaintances. Kathryn Cabral, American consul to Scotland, is one of the latter. She is in the diplomats' tent, right next to the royal tent. She can see the queen talking to guests. "I could have shouted to her, but that wasn't the thing to do," she jokes.

That keen sense of propriety will soon guide North Carolina officials in their dealings with foreign governments. In August, Cabral, a career foreign-service officer on one-year loan from the U.S. State Department, began setting up the state's first Office of International Services, an arm of the N.C. secretary of state's office. It will keep track of agreements between state agencies and foreign governments, foster communication between agencies that deal with foreign governments and, most important, teach local bureaucrats how to behave on the world stage. It's not that Tar Heels lack manners. Indeed, "everyone that I've met here in North Carolina sort of knows the etiquette, more even than where I grew up in New England," Cabral says. "Everyone here seems to be very charming and polite."

So if our bureaucrats are minding their manners, why the etiquette lessons? Because different cultures have different priorities. George Jeter, the State Department's director of communication, tells of a recent visit by Chinese Embassy officials. He realized he hadn't brought enough...