Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad concluded his four-day working visit to Thailand in conjunction with the 34th Asean Summit yesterday, describing it as a fruitful meeting marathon.

“This has been a marathon (of meetings). One meeting after another. I might be breathless but we did achieve quite a lot of things at this edition of Asean Summit,” the 93-year-old prime minister told Malaysian reporters at a press conference in Bangkok.

Indeed, Mahathir, who led the Malaysian delegation to the summit, had a really packed schedule, which included a bilateral meeting with his Thai counterpart, General Prayuth Chan o-cha.

On Saturday, Mahathir participated in three Asean Leaders’ interfaces, each with representatives of Asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), Asean Youth and Asean Business Advisory Council (Asean-BAC).

“During those interfaces, they have presented their views and reports on their needs and what needs to be done. We have noted down all the requests and their memorandum,” he said.

Earlier yesterday, Mahathir attended the opening of the 34th Asean Summit and the Asean Leaders’ Retreat.

He also attended the 13th Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) Summit and the 12th Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) Summit.

“Each of us was able to give our views about the performance of Asean. We heard reports about the performance of Asean.

“By and large, we are quite satisfied that there has been quite a lot of progress,” Mahathir said.

The prime minister was accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Saifuddin Abdullah, International Trade and Industry Minister Darrel Leiking and Economic Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali, as well as officials from the Prime Minister's Office, Wisma Putra, Ministry of International Trade and Industry and Ministry of Economic Affairs (MEA).

- Bernama