DR. SURAKIART SATHIRATHAI is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. He is also the Chairman of the Executive Board of Siam Premier International Law Office Ltd. in Thailand. His law firm is associated with Allens Arthur Robinson from Australia. The firm has a network of 12 regional offices in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr. Surakiart is also President of the Saranrom Institute of Foreign Affairs Foundation (SIFAF). The Foundation supports the activities of the Institute which serves as the academic arm and think tank of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand. The Foundation was established upon the initiative of Dr. Surakiart during his tenure as Foreign Minister.

Between 2005 - 2006, Dr. Surakiart was Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, where he oversaw foreign affairs, education, and culture. The Royal Thai Government had nominated Dr. Surakiart as Thailand's candidate for United Nations Secretary General when H.E. Mr. Kofi Annan completed his term at the end of 2006. The Leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN- comprising Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) had also endorsed Dr. Surakiart's candidature.

An expert in international law, finance, and economic development, Dr. Surakiart has over twenty years of experience in academia, government, and business, including terms as Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, and policy advisor to the Prime Minister. Dr. Surakiart also has significant private sector experience. He had served as Chairman of a Thai commercial bank and head of the Thai national petroleum enterprise, as well as founding partner of a leading commercial law firm.

Dr. Surakiart has a record of successful management reform in difficult circumstances, having spearheaded the reform and privatization of major Thai enterprises, reformed the operations of the Thai Foreign Ministry and having instituted major curricular changes at the Faculty of Law at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He has deep experience in international negotiation, both diplomatic and commercial, and a record of strengthening multilateral cooperation across Asia.


Personal Background and Education:

Dr. Surakiart was born in 1958 in Bangkok, Thailand. His father was a well-respected official in the Thai Ministry of Finance and was sent to restructure a commercial bank in the past, and his mother was a renowned Professor in French literature. Both his parents were French-educated. He grew up in Bangkok, where from an early age he took an interest in issues related to democracy. Like many young Thais, Dr. Surakiart spent a period in a Buddhist monastery, and his Buddhist upbringing remains the touchstone of his personal philosophy and ethic.

Dr. Surakiart completed a law degree with honors - Gold Medal Award from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, then continued his studies of law and international economics in the United States, where he obtained two masters degrees: a Masters in Law (LL.M.) from Harvard with a thesis on human rights and another in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (M.A.L.D.). He was the first Thai to earn a doctorate in law (S.J.D.) from Harvard University. In 2006, he was bestowed an Honorary Doctorate Degree by Eastern Asia University, Bangkok, in recognition for his contribution to public administration. Dr. Surakiart's doctoral thesis, "An Understanding of the Relationship Among International Legal Discourse About Development, Third World Countries, and International Peace," (1985) explored the global trade and investment law regime from the perspective of the third world. Two years later, he co-edited a book, "Third World Attitudes Toward International Law: An Introduction," with Professor Frederick Snyder which was published widely, and has ever since been an active participant in academic debate.


Academic Career:

Upon returning to Thailand, Dr. Surakiart began his academic career as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Chulalongkorn University, where he taught on GATT (later WTO), the IMF, the World Bank and foreign investment, and published in the field of international economic law. His work won him appointments as the inaugural Director of the Law and Development Research Centre, Vice-Dean for Foreign Relations, and subsequently elected as Dean of the Faculty between 1991-1995. Dr. Surakiart pushed through major curricular reforms, founding Thailand's first-ever international economic law curriculum and interdisciplinary program on law and development. He then found practical application for the growing consensus on law and development when asked to introduce law reform into the Fifth National Economic and Social Development Plan. He substantially broadened the Faculty's international programs, bringing numerous professors from abroad to collaborate with Thai researchers and students.

Like many leading public universities of the developing world, the Chulalongkorn law faculty then lacked the resources routinely available in the first world. Dr. Surakiart learned quickly how to work through and around these constraints - telephoning abroad from a local noodle shop, copying forms and papers on his own - to build programs and establish partnerships with colleagues at many foreign universities.


Early Political Experience

Dr. Surakiart has accepted numerous political appointments over the past twenty years, lending his financial and diplomatic expertise to prime ministers of various parties. His first appointment came under Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda in 1986, when Boonchu Rojanasatien, then the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the lower house of Parliament, asked him to serve as Advisor and Head of the Professional Staff Office of the Committee.

He then served as Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan from 1988 to 1991, assisting in trade negotiations with the United States on intellectual property issues. Recognizing that ongoing hostilities in Cambodia were threatening security and economic stability along the Thai border, PM Chatichai asked Dr. Surakiart to serve in his team to implement the Prime Minister's vision of "turning a battlefield into a market place". At a time when his government was officially associated with one faction in Cambodia, Dr. Surakiart opened secret negotiations with all factions, working in close cooperation with the United States and other parties to broker meetings that ultimately brought the civil war to an end, restored peace, stability and eventually brought about a UN supervised election.

Under Prime Minister Chuan Leek-pai , he was appointed Chairman of the Business Law Reform Committee. He proposed changes of the substances of the majority of laws enacted under several military junta regimes and to be submitted to the elected parliament.


Financial Experience

Dr. Surakiart became Thailand's youngest Finance Minister under Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa, a position he held from July of 1995 to May of 1996. Inheriting a national economy beset by the structural challenges that ultimately exposed it to the Thai financial crisis, Dr. Surakiart designed and implemented reforms that, while deeply unpopular, moved the economy in the right direction and today have become an essential part of Thailand's economic policy.

When he took office as Finance Minister, the Thai current account deficit was at 6 %, inflation and interest rates were very high, and the longtime peg of the Baht to the American dollar had sustained a bubble of overseas borrowing, particularly in the real estate sector. At the time, the Bank of Thailand (BOT) had no way of measuring or discouraging short-term capital inflows, and the Bank's loan classification procedures were out of line with international standards, allowing many Thai banks to hide non-performing loans.

Recognizing the danger and looming instability, Dr. Surakiart immediately took strong steps to reduce risky investments, none of which were popular with the financial sector. He worked with the BOT to urge commercial banks to reign in loans to speculative sectors, and to discourage short-term capital flows by introducing various stringent policies such as increasing the restrictions upon non-resident Baht accounts, and discouraging offshore borrowing. He also set up a balanced budget. Although these reforms came too late to stave off the financial crisis which struck under his successor, they nevertheless form the backbone of Thailand's present economic policy.

As Finance Minister, Dr. Surakiart developed Thailand's first Fiscal and Financial Master Plan for Social Development, which called for decentralization of fiscal authority and more micro-credit opportunities. The Plan set health-promotion goals which ultimately led to the establishment of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, a body funded via a "sin tax" on alcohol and tobacco and dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of all Thais. Dr. Surakiart also gained international recognition for his efforts to strengthen Asian cooperation through the ASEAN Free Trade Area Council, as well as in the framework of the IMF and the World Bank, in particular through his proposals for the establishment of ASEAN and ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) Finance Ministers' Meetings.

After Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyuth took office in 1996, he invited Dr. Surakiart to serve as Vice-Chairman of the Advisory Council on Economic and Foreign Affairs. During a year in this position, Dr. Surakiart proposed a look-west policy, thus strengthening economic ties between Thailand and India. He promoted Thailand as an investment destination, and coordinated with Japan on infrastructure development to make northeastern Thailand a transportation gateway to Indochina.

Building on these experiences, Dr. Surakiart ultimately led the effort to redesign Thailand's financial architecture as President of the Institute of Social and Economic Policy (ISEP) from 1997 to 2001. Heading that organization, he organized numerous public seminars to build consensus around the need for deep legal reforms in the areas of money laundering, bankruptcy, privatization, and other issues.


Business Experience

After his success pushing through needed reforms as Finance Minister, various major corporations asked for Dr. Surakiart's assistance in overhauling their operations. After the crisis, the Bank of Thailand faced international pressure to eliminate its past bad practices. The Governor of the Bank of Thailand turned to Dr. Surakiart to restructure the management of the Laem Thong Bank ("LTB" now part of UOB Bank). He accomplished the task in a matter of months, forcing all but one member of the board to retire, replacing them with financial professionals, recapitalized the Bank with injection of new fresh capital from overseas and domestic new shareholders, and instituting an early retirement program that led to the replacement of nearly twenty top managers, in the process cutting the bank's costs by 20%.

The Thai government again sought Dr. Surakiart's assistance when it needed to raise capital for the Exploration and Production subsidiary of the Petroleum Authority of Thailand ("PTTEP" - a public listed company). Dr. Surakiart served as Chairman of the Board, where he negotiated with underwriters over terms of an initial public offering. The IPO sold out of shares, a rare success story in Thailand at the time right after the financial crisis of 1997. He also gained experience in complex international negotiations over oil exploration and among foreign investors in the PTTEP.

Soon thereafter, Dr. Surakiart became Chairman of the Executive Board of the Thai Oil Company, another subsidiary of the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, which had fallen into bankruptcy. At Thai Oil, he resolved conflicts among shareholders and restructured over U.S. $2B in debt with over 130 creditors, making the company the first to restructure under Thailand's recently-reformed Bankruptcy Act. During that process, Dr. Surakiart closed a 20-story office in Bangkok and moved the company's employees to the plant and to another building owned by an affiliate, a move which was very unpopular among the company's managerial employees, but which saved a great deal of money. Dr. Surakiart accomplished all this without significantly affecting workers' benefits. Following these achievements, in 1999 Dr. Surakiart was appointed Chairman of the Executive Board of the PTT, where he planned the privatization of the PTT's subsidiaries.

Throughout this period, Dr. Surakiart also maintained a private law practice at the Siam Premier International Law Office, a firm he founded in 1990 and associated with one of the largest Australian law firms Allens Arthur Robinson and which is today one of the largest law firms in Bangkok with extensive expertise in various aspects of commercial and financial law and with a network of offices in the Asia-Pacific region. He stepped down from the Firm as constitutionally required when he became the Thai Foreign Minister in 2001.


Service As Foreign Minister

Dr. Surakiart was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 2001, a moment when the international community, stung by the Asian financial crisis, had relatively little confidence in Thailand. As Foreign Minister, Dr. Surakiart reoriented Thai foreign policy towards intra-Asian cooperation, vigorously promoting a "prosper thy neighbor" policy of regional economic development. In the process, Dr. Surakiart changed the modalities of intra-Asian diplomacy by building cooperative networks among an extremely diverse set of nations called Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) which at present has 30 members across the whole continent of Asia. He also played an innovative role in health and welfare issues such as HIV/AIDS and landmines, and was involved in several sensitive peace and collective security negotiations in the region.


Development

Through his tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Surakiart reinforced Thailand's ties to traditional allies and neighbors through conferences and initiatives by ASEAN and other regional formations, and increasing contact and trade among Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in particular. Where necessary and appropriate, Dr. Surakiart built new partnerships for specific purposes.

For example, the success of the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) has been largely due to Dr. Surakiart's speed in moving the cooperation process forward. Within eight months of its initiation in April of 2003, following extensive diplomatic planning, top leaders of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Thailand endorsed nearly fifty common projects and over two hundred bilateral development projects to be implemented over the subsequent decade. In one such project, for example, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia have implemented a contract arrangement (contract farming) whereby Thai businesses identify various necessary crops which Laotian and Cambodian farmers then produce for the Thai market. Vietnam has later joined the ACMECS.

Early in his term, Dr. Surakiart recognized that collaboration with China and India was essential for future large-scale development projects in Southeast Asia, and that Thailand was well-situated culturally, politically, and geographically to broker such cooperation. Thus, he established close ties with Chinese and Indian leaders early in his tenure, building a comfort level that made collaboration over mutually beneficial projects much easier.

Dr. Surakiart initiated the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, (ACD), the first ever framework organization for all nations across the continent, including China, India, the Middle East and even Russia. After announcing plans to found ACD in 2001, Dr. Surakiart traveled the continent building support for the idea, a task requiring him to manage relationships among leaders of nations with widely divergent religions, languages, ethnicities, and development goals. Since its establishment, ACD nations have begun countless projects around energy security, agriculture, biotechnology, tourism, poverty alleviation, IT development, and financial cooperation.

The same skills that fostered this new diplomacy also made Surakiart instrumental in brokering the East-West Economic Corridor, a major road connecting Southeast Asian nations from Vietnam to Myanmar, and linking with roads to India. Furthermore, recognizing that a coordinated regional response to drug trafficking was necessary, Surakiart brought India and China together with Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar to form an Anti-Drug Cooperation network.

As Foreign Minister, Dr. Surakiart has served his nation in broader multilateral organizations. For example, as the Vice-President of the Eleventh Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XI) in 2004, he worked to strengthen South-South cooperation at the multilateral level and promoted partnership and self-help as crucial to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. He has also been a strong supporter of the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC).


Health and Welfare

As Foreign Minister Dr. Surakiart focused on a variety of international health and welfare issues. For example, his close contacts with Chinese officials enabled Dr. Surakiart to respond rapidly to SARS, setting up a high-level meeting between ASEAN leaders and China within days after news of the crisis broke. Of crucial importance, Dr. Surakiart was instrumental in convincing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to attend, in what became his first trip abroad as Prime Minister, thus defusing potential tensions between China and ASEAN nations over the epidemic, and permitting construction of cooperative networks that helped head off a potential global health crisis.

Dr. Surakiart also substantially increased the resources available for de-mining operations while serving as President of the Fifth Meeting of the States Parties to the Ottawa Convention to eliminate anti-personnel landmines in 2003. Realizing that the World Bank classified de-mining as a security issue and therefore refused to fund it, Dr. Surakiart worked with then-President James Wolfensohn to re-classify de-mining as a development issue, enabling affected nations to obtain Bank funding for de-mining for the first time.

Realizing that Thailand had developed a largely effective response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, Dr. Surakiart instructed the Thailand International Cooperation Agency to develop HIV training programs for other nations seeking assistance addressing the crisis. He co-chaired the second Asia-Pacific Ministerial Meeting on HIV/AIDS in Bangkok in 2004. That meeting, attended by representatives of thirty-six Asian and Pacific nations, resulted in unprecedented commitments to strengthen inter-regional cooperation to combat HIV/AIDS, including intensive information-sharing on national programs and policies as well as regional initiatives to address trans-boundary priorities.

Dr. Surakiart's term as Foreign Minister was marked by the December 2004 Tsunami disaster, in Thailand and throughout the region. Within hours of the Tsunami, Dr. Surakiart arranged to fly staff from nearly thirty embassies to Phuket the same day the tsunami occurred to inspect the damage and set up facilities for those of their citizens who were affected. Dr. Surakiart coordinated the domestic relief effort, while facilitating the U.S. led efforts to establish a regional relief center in Thailand. After immediate relief needs were taken care of, Dr. Surakiart coordinated with Secretary General Annan and various ASEAN nations to set up the infrastructure for immediate coordination among impacted nations in case of future such crises and proposed standby arrangements for disaster relief. Within one month after the tsunami, he facilitated a ministerial meeting among thirty nations to begin setting up an early-warning system for future tsunamis. Such system has now been set up in Thailand and various parts of Southeast Asia.


Peace and Collective Security

Dr. Surakiart also played a key role in peace-building efforts in Asia. By building trust with his immediate neighbors, he was able to settle long-simmering border disputes between Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Approached by Norway and all factions in Sri Lanka and trusted as a fellow Buddhist by the Sri Lankan leadership, he offered Thailand as a venue for the Sri Lankan peace talks, which were led by Norway. Later, he organized a series of meetings in Bangkok designed to create dialogue between Myanmar and the international community and promote democracy in Myanmar, an initiative that led to the "Bangkok Process" for reform in Myanmar.
Following the Bali bombings and the attempted downing of an airliner in Kenya, Dr. Surakiart led the initiative under which APEC decided to ban shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles ("MANPADs"). Key to this effort was Dr. Surakiart's decision to frame the issue as a threat to civil aviation and thus to tourism and economic development. Before the introduction of the six-party North Korea talks, moreover, Dr. Surakiart sought to prevent North Korean isolation and keep the channels of communication open by working with ASEAN through his initiative of "friends of the Chair of ARF" to urge and convince North Korea to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which is the security forum for ASEAN and allies, though he stepped aside this effort when the six-party talks began.


Deputy Prime Minister

As Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Surakiart now oversees foreign affairs, education, and culture, after having overseen labour and human resources, social development and human security, giving him overarching responsibility over policy related to poverty alleviation and development. While continuing his work building regional partnerships, he has also set himself to the task of better protecting the rights of women and addressing the needs of the vulnerable, including a regularization program for foreign labour within Thailand which has resulted in registration of over a million immigrants from Myanmar, who can now obtain health, educational and other services. He led the drafting of a bill to suppress and prevent human trafficking especially to assist victims of trafficking which he moved through the Thai Cabinet, and which is now in Parliament.


Personal

Dr. Surakiart is fluent in Thai and English, and proficient in French. He is married to Thanpuying * Dr. Suthawan Sathirathai, who holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge (UK), a graduate degree in economics from Tufts University (USA), and an engineering degree from Chulalongkorn University. They have one son, Mr. Santitarn Sathirathai, born in Boston, a Bachelor and Masters graduate of the London School of Economics who left the Thai Ministry of Finance to continue his postgraduate studies at The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Dr. Surakiart's favorite sports are badminton, bicycling and swimming.

* Thanpuying is Thailand's highest ranking title for ladies graciously and rarely granted by His Majesty the King, comparable to "Grand Dam