Asean co-founder Thanat passes away at 102
FORMER FOREIGN minister and one of the founders of Asean, Thanat Khoman, passed away yesterday at the age of 102.
Thanat, who was foreign minister from 1959-1971 and Democrat Party leader from 1979-1982, died of old age.
Born in Bangkok to a Thai-Chinese family, Thanat attended Assumption College in Bangkok, before he went to France and graduated from a Bordeaux college.
He got a scholarship from the Thai Foreign Ministry to continue higher studies in Bordeaux and Paris, earning degrees from the School of Higher International Studies , and Sciences Po, a research institution in Paris in 1939, as well as a doctorate in law from the University of Paris in 1940.
He began his diplomatic career in 1941 as second secretary at the Thai Embassy in Tokyo. He became foreign minister in Sarit Thanarat’s government in 1959 and played a key role in boosting US presence in the region.
He signed a joint communique in 1962 with then US secretary of state Dean Rusk to support a campaign against communism in the Indochina peninsula.
Thanat achieved renown as one of the founders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 1967.
Thanat, together with his colleagues from four Southeast Asian nations – Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso R Ramos of the Philippines, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia and S Rajaratnam of Singapore – signed the Bangkok Declaration to set up the regional grouping, initially aimed at jointly tackling the communist threat.
In almost four decades since then, Asean has developed into a formidable international organisation and is in the process of becoming a community for deeper integration in all areas – political, security, economic, social and culture.
