Among issues discussed was illegal wildlife trading and drug trafficking, to reduce such problems in Asean.
Deputy Interior Minister Sutee Markboon led assistant national police chief Pol Lt-General Dechnarong Suticharnbancha and other Thai officials from related agencies to attend the meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
Dechnarong said the fifth Asean Summit, held in Bangkok in 1995, managed to gain cooperation in the region to tackle drug trafficking.
Consequently, two conferences were held as regional mechanisms to suppress transnational crimes; the Asean Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC), which is held annually, and the Asean Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC) which includes dialogue with partners from China, Japan and South Korea.
Dechnarong said Thai representatives yesterday pushed for eradication of the illegal wildlife trade and logging to be part of the SOMTC cooperation dialogue – which would first require AMMTC’s unanimous support. He said that this week’s event, with all members present, also resulted in the signing of a memorandum of understanding on transnational crime, |particularly the expansion of extremist groups and radicalism.