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ASIAWEEK: 980814: Thailand is shaki



                ASEAN'S ICONOCLASTS

  Thailand is shaking up the status quo in foreign relations

                           By Roger Mitton / Bangkok


"MY, OH, MY, YOU sure are full of ideas. You are my hero," trilled U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright at last month's ASEAN ministerial meeting in Manila. Who did she mean? Bill
Clinton? Nelson Mandela? Nope, she was referring to Surin Pitsuwan, Thailand's bold new foreign
minister. Her praise flowed from Surin's now famous - or infamous, depending on your point of
view - proposal that ASEAN's cherished non-interference policy be replaced by "flexible
engagement." The U.S. loved it because it would let the group lambast new member Myanmar,
America's favorite whipping boy. But apart from the Philippines, all other ASEAN states recoiled at
the idea - and at the way Surin had brashly gone public with it without consulting them.

It was a typical Surin move and he basked in the limelight. "Surin is a thinker, a visionary," says a
Western diplomat in Bangkok. "He is also very smart, always well-briefed and knows what he's
talking about." Not everyone is a fan, however. Says one Asian ambassador: "He is very amateurish
in the way he goes about doing things." Many in ASEAN think he is too pushy for a new kid on the
block.

But what no one disputes is that Surin and his equally smart deputy, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, are
putting Thai foreign affairs back on the map. Says Chulalongkorn University dean Suchit
Bunbongkarn: "In the 1960s, Thailand was at the forefront of foreign policy, but then we changed
ministers so often - and they were not quite professional people - that we were overtaken by
Singapore and Indonesia. But now we have people who really know their stuff."

Indeed. Surin and Sukhumbhand are both onetime university lecturers with impeccable
qualifications; the former studied at Harvard, the latter at Oxford. When they were sworn in last
November, the duo were touted as the Foreign Ministry's best team ever. Surin, 48, is a tall,
gregarious Muslim from southern Thailand. Buddhist Sukhumbhand, 45, is diffident and
soft-spoken, and hails from Bangkok. "They make a very good team," says Withaya
Sucharithanarugse, head of the Institute of Asian Studies.

Surin set the tone soon after taking the helm. "Not many governments would bother to make human
rights a part of their foreign policy," he said. "But given our recent experience, it is pivotal that this
value is incorporated in our diplomacy." He has already upset Myanmar's ruling junta, not only with
his flexible-engagement proposition but by saying he wants to visit oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi
when he goes to Yangon.

Given such a stance, one criticism of Surin's team is that it is too pro-American. "They are just
lackeys of the Americans," says Chulalongkorn University's Chayachoke Chulasiriwongs.
Sukhumbhand's defense of the team's tack: "We have revitalized our partnership with the U.S.
which we identified as a high priority."

For all his advocacy of human rights, Surin's report card on the subject is mixed. It started off badly
when the Foreign Ministry backed heavy-handed police monitoring of a conference on East Timor
which was held in Bangkok earlier this year. It was also intimated that Nobel laureates Bishop
Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos Horta would have been denied visas had they
applied. Sukhumbhand offers an explanation: "The promotion of human rights and the protection of
our national interests are interlinked and in certain cases there may be a trade-off between the two."

Making trade-offs is as typical of Surin as his brashness. He may have expressed a desire to see
Suu Kyi, but he hedges when asked if he would meet other noted opposition figures like J.B.
Jeyaretnam, Lim Guan Eng and Doan Viet Hoat on his next visits to Singapore, Malaysia and
Vietnam. "On certain issues, I think we can have our own judgment of what we want to say" is his
vague reply. Such equivocation has been a source of criticism for Surin.

The duo also have detractors within their own Democrat Party. Says Suchit: "I don't know what