BANGKOK: Thailand’s former Foreign Minister and Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan died of acute heart attack on Thursday at the age of 68, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported.
He collapsed and was sent to Ramkhamhaeng Hospital in Bangkok where he was pronounced dead around 3pm today.
His burial ceremony will be performed at the cemetery of the Tha-it mosque in Nonthaburi tomorrow.
Surin was born in Oct 28, 1949 in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
He graduated from Claremont McKenna College, California, in political science in 1972. He earned a Master of Arts in Political Science in 1974 and received a PhD in international relations at Harvard University in 1982.
He pursued an academic career as a lecturer at Thammasat University from 1975-1986 before he entered the politics.
He became a Nakhon Si Thammarat MP of the Democrat Party in 1986 and was appointed to be the foreign minister from 1997-2001.
He took the post of Asean secretary general in the five-year term from 2008 to 2013.-- BERNAMA