New DPM/defence minister to visit Thai far South

BANGKOK, October 2 (TNA) - Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwon will visit the Thai far South on October 3 to follow up solutions to the violence-plagued region. General Prawit told reporters that Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha assigned him to supervise the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) and he will discuss effective southern solutions with the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) during his stay in the Thai deep South. General Prawit acknowledged that the head of a peace negotiation team to talk with representatives of southern insurgency movements has not yet been appointed by the ISOC and the government. Meanwhile, the prime minister assured that the appointment of Anusit Kunakorn as the new Secretary-General of the National Security Council (NSC), as proposed by concerned authorities, will not affect southern solutions because he oversees them by himself. In a related development, a bomb, weighing about 20 kilograms and placed in a cooking gas cylinder, was detonated when eight soldiers were patrolling a teachers' route on Yi-ngo-Rueso Road in Narathiwat Province's Yi-ngo District on Thursday morning, but no one was injured because the impact of the bomb went skywards. (TNA)