Laos names veteran diplomat with international outlook to be new prime minister

BANGKOK -- BANGKOK (AP) — Laos has a new prime minister after the communist country’s National Assembly elected veteran diplomat Saleumxay Kommasith to the post, state-run media reported Tuesday.Saleumxay, who turns 58 on Oct. 31, was elected on Monday in the Laotian capital Vientiane in a unanimous vote of 158 lawmakers who were present, the state news agency KPL said. He is a member of the Politburo of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and had previously served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Saleumxay succeeded Sonexay Siphandone, who in turn was elected the National Assembly president.Saleumxay studied at Russia’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations and Australia’s Monash University before serving in a series of foreign ministry posts overseeing relations with Australia, the United States, the Americas, and Europe. He also served in the Lao Mission to the United Nations in New York and can speak English, Russian, and French.His Western-oriented career is unusual for Laos, a small land-locked and impoverished country whose leaders generally have virtually no international profile aside from links with fraternal neighboring communist governm...