Kasit attends Nam summit in Egypt

Kasit is scheduled to meet with his Asean counterparts on the side of the two-day meeting and hold bilateral meetings with leaders from Egypt, India, and Serbia.

The summit and the bilateral meetings will be held in Egypt seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday. The minister was speaking to reporters during a transit in Cairo.

Kasit will be representing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at this summit, which is chaired by Cuba. The next chair will be Egypt. Nam summit is conducted once every three years but Nam foreign ministers meet once a year.

After the two day summit, Kasit is schedule to open a soccer tournament in which Thai students, most of whom from the country's southernmost border provinces, will take part.

About 1,500 students from Thailand are currently studying in Egypt's Islamic universities, some of which are over 1,000 years old.

As the chair of Asean, Thailand will highlight a number of ongoing activities in the Southeast Asia, including regional cooperation on humanitarian assistance in Burma in the aftermath of a major natural disaster last year and joint patrol in the Straits of Melecca, a waterway through which a significant number of the world's cargo ship pass through.

Kasit said a number of high profile issues, including the conflict in the Middle East and global nuclear arms, as well as the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Dafur are expected to be raise at the forum.

Thai Cabinet and Parliament have approved the dispatching of 800 troops to take part in the Sudan's wa-rtorn region of Darfur under the banner of UN peace keeping operation.

Kasit said Asean has agreed at the recent annual ministerial meeting Hua Hin that the regional grouping wants to be more active in global arena on various issues that ranges from the conflict in the Middle East and enhancing transparency, discipline and efficiency in the regulatory mechanism in World Bank, International Monetary Funds and other international monetary and financial bodies.

One of the issue raised in the Asean circle is the possibility of humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka in the country's recovery process following decades of civil war in the country.

"The idea is to promote Asean collective effort in the international arena," Kasit said.

Nam was founded in 1961 as part of an international effort to enhance the position of countries not allied to major powers during the Cold War era.