Former Thai minister next ASEAN head

MANILA (AFP) - Southeast Asian nations have named former Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan as the next secretary general of ASEAN, the 10-nation bloc announced Thursday.

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will confirm Surin for a five-year term at their November summit in Singapore. He will succeed Singapore's Ong Keng Yong beginning January 1.

The 57-year-old Surin is one of the few Muslims to have held top government positions in overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand.

Surin earned a Ph.D from Harvard University in 1982, and also studied Arabic and Islamic philosophy at the American University in Cairo. He served as Thailand's foreign minister from November 1997 to February 2001.

He has called for greater regional integration as a way of ensuring that Southeast Asia can compete against the growing economies of China and India.

The post of secretary general has the equivalent rank of foreign minister within ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.