Surin calls for active ARF role in tackling Korean crisis
ASEAN needs to be more integrated and stronger to cope with the changing global landscape, as “multilateralism” was in decline, former ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan said on April 20, calling on the regional grouping to enhance the role of the ASEAN Regional Forum to solve the crisis in the Korean Peninsula. The secretive communist state North Korea was included as a member of the ARF in 2000 when Surin was the foreign minister of Thailand, which then chaired ASEAN, to engage with the international forum. All of the members of the now dormant six-party talks to tackle Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions are in the ARF, but after the problem in the Korean Peninsula erupted there was no mention of the ARF, he said.
