Surin Pitsuwan is a man who excels in volatile times, and that’s a good thing. He helped steer Thailand through the Asian financial crisis as the country’s Finance minister from 1997 to 2001, and he assisted the UN in negotiating a peace agreement between Indonesia and the breakaway province of East Timor in 1999. Appointed to the post of secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in January, Surin, 57, believes that the ten-nation bloc is far less vulnerable to today’s credit crisis than it was a decade ago. “Better norms and better surveillance systems have been established,” he says. “We need to be careful not to overreact in our reassessment of risks and the high volatility of asset prices. This could lead to our own version of a credit crunch.”
