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South tour fruitful, says OIC team
Published on June 10, 2005
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has a better understanding of the situation in the deep South after a visit by a fact-finding delegation, the head of the delegation said yesterday.
Former OIC assistant secretary-general Sayed El-Masari said the visit, during which he met many concerned parties including victims of the violence, brought the organisation new information about the situation in southern Thailand.
The delegation would polish an OIC draft report on the violence in the predominantly Muslim region to be submitted to a ministerial meeting in Yemen later this month, he said.
Sayed yesterday met Foreign Minister Kantathi Supham-ongkhon to express his satisfaction with the visit and the delegation’s access to first-hand information. Kantathi assured the delegation his government was willing to work with the OIC and southern communities to solve problems peacefully and to develop the region.
Kantathi is leaving for a four-day visit to Malaysia during which he will update the Malaysian government about the situation in Thailand’s Malay-speaking South “in light of the fact that Malaysia will chair the upcoming OIC ministerial meeting in Yemen”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Puangketkoew said.
The focus of Kantathi’s visit, said Sihasak, would be the Joint Development Strategy, an initiative by the two countries to boost economic development in their common border area.
Sayed said the OIC would help communities in the South, mainly in the form of granting scholarships to Thai Muslim students, particularly girls, and in building mosques in Narathiwat and Yala, as requested by local communities.
The OIC delegation also met Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, a Muslim adviser to the PM, to exchange views on the South. Wan Noor said the OIC delegation visit would improve Thailand’s standing in Muslim countries. |
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