Development aimed at improving people's lives is key to solving the problems in the far South and ending the violence in the insurgency-plagued region, National Security Council (NSC) secretary-general Anusit Kunakorn said on Tuesday.
Anusit Kunakorn
The NSC was fully supporting development in southern border areas, as it would improve local people's lives and this would help bring an end to the violence in the region.
Development had been a key solution to ending the communist problem in the past, he said at Government House.
Mr Anusit said the government was taking the right path to a southern solution by implementing development projects. Local people were actively responding to the authorities' approach.
The NSC was working with all ministries to develop southern border provinces, he added.
The NSC secretary-general also said that "influential people" in the far South were another problem that would also have to be tackled.
A framework for future peace talks with southern insurgency movements was being drafted, but he still had no idea when the next round of peace negotiation would occur.