Bangkok: Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai faces a long, uphill race for the top job at the United Nations despite the backing of his Southeast Asian neighbours, analysts and diplomats said on Thursday. The wealthy Harvard-educated lawyer was endorsed by his regional counterparts on Wednesday as Southeast Asia’s choice to succeed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan when his second five-year terms ends in 2006.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, keen to raise Thailand’s profile abroad, had touted his foreign minister as Asian nations argued it’s their turn to lead the 191-nation group.

Those efforts appear to have paid off with the endorsement of the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a bloc of some 500 million people.

But the jockeying to replace Annan has only just begun, experts say, and Surakiart, 46, has yet to score a major foreign policy success to raise his global profile.

“With ASEAN’s backing, he has clearly overcome a hurdle, but he has many more hurdles to come,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a foreign relations lecturer at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

“I think he will have an uphill task. We have about two years left and when it gets down to the wire I’m sure questions about his suitability will come up,” he added.

The son of a bureaucrat and an avid collector of rare watches and antique cars, Surakiart has spent most of his career moving between academia, business and politics.

After earning a doctoral degree in law from Harvard University, he taught law in Bangkok before entering politics as a chief adviser to Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa.

His appointment as finance minister in 1995, despite not being an elected member of parliament, was a bruising experience. Accused of incompetence and blamed for a sluggish stock market, he quit a year later and went into
oil and banking.

“I have never been successful when it comes to public relations. I don’t know why. Neither do I know how to correct it,” he once said about negative media coverage during that time.

A co-founder of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, he became foreign minister after the party swept to power in 2001.

MYANMAR HURDLE

Annan has made clear he does not want a third term. Nominations for the post usually originate from regional groupings, with the 15-nation Security Council settling on a single name that is voted on by the 191-nation General Assembly.

But ASEAN is part of a 56-member Asian group, which could either back Surakiart or put forward other candidates - the latter being more likely, one Western diplomat said.

“I was surprised because he doesn’t really have a global profile. His big international initiative was the Bangkok Process, but that was flattened and I would think that would take the wind out of his sails,” said the Bangkok-based diplomat.

The Bangkok Process aimed to bring military-ruled Myanmar, its neighbours and the West to the negotiating table to encourage the transition to democracy in the former Burma.

But the talks stalled after Yangon refused to attend the last meeting in April. It is pushing ahead with a controversial democracy roadmap that excludes opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, and her party. Unlike the West, Thailand has tried to engage Yangon’s
generals and opposes sanctions on the junta. But Western nations are frustrated at Thailand’s reluctance to get tough with its neighbour and that could hurt Surakiart’s candidacy.

“Thai policy towards Burma is not well received by the international community,” Thitinan said.