New government special representative for Thai Far South talks appointed

BANGKOK, October 11 (TNA) - The Thai Cabinet has approved the appointment of a new government special representative for peace negotiations with representatives of insurgent groups in the country's troubled Far South, as proposed by the National Security Council (NSC). Assistant Government Spokeswoman Colonel Thaksada Sangkhachan told journalists that the Thai Cabinet made the decision at its weekly meeting at Bangkok's Government House on October 10. The assistant spokeswoman said that the government's newly-appointed representative for its peace.negotiation process in the Thai Deep South is Chatpong Chatrakom, a former director of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), who was also endorsed at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting to work as the secretary of the government's new representative as his another hat. According to the assistant spokeswoman, a former NSC secretary general, Pornchart Bunnag, was earlier proposed to take the dual posts, but NSC later changed the nominee to the ex-NIA chief. The assistant spokeswoman stated, meanwhile, that Tuesday's Cabinet meeting also approved the appointment of a Royal Thai Air Force representative, Air Chief Marshal Bhanupong Seyayongka, to be a new member of the regulating panel of the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT), under the Thai Ministry of Transport, replacing a retiring member, and of four new executive posts of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, three of whom are the new Thai ambassadors to Italy, Morocco and Brunei Darussalam and the rest is the new director-general of the ministry's Department of Treaties and Legal Affairs. (TNA)