Thaksin asks for local help to solve southern problem

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has asked local people for help on negotiations with insurgents in the Muslim-dominated south, local press reports saidon Sunday.

"I want you to tell the bandits to meet me. Let's hear about their separatist ideologies.

I will meet them for negotiations," the prime minister was quoted by Bangkok Post as saying.

Those who refused to negotiate would be arrested and face legalaction while those who entered talks could negotiate the cases against them, he said Saturday at a provincial administration organization meeting in Pattani, some 1,000 km south of Bangkok and close to Malaysia to the south.

Thaksin, however, set no timeframe for the talks with insurgents.

He made the appeal on the last day of his three-day visit to the deep south hit by constant violence in the past four months and rocked by the latest clashes between insurgents and governmenttroops that left 113 people dead.

The government first blamed resurgence of local separatist movement as the reason of the violence, but then pointed finger atinterest groups, mafia and corrupt politicians for the unrest and said long-time neglect of local development was the root cause of the problem.

Meanwhile, the prime minister pledged more employment and education for local people so as to lift them from poverty, which made it easier for any insurgent groups to recruit in the region.

During his heavy-guarded three-day stay in the kingdom's southernmost area, Thaksin made several moves to behave as a leader close to local people, including getting up earlier for rub-tapping, living in local temple and paying a visit to an ancient mosque stormed by government troops in the April 28 clashes.

"Before flying back to Bangkok, Thaksin expressed confidence that his latest trip to the south would help improve the situation,saying that he had given local people a morale boost," said the state-run Thai News Agency.

However, the region was under fresh violence including arson, bombs and attacks against police post late Friday and Saturday, which was believed to coincide with the prime minister's visit.

"The terror attacks were clearly meant as a challenge to security forces, timed to coincide with the prime minister's stay in Narathiwat," the Fourth Army Region Commander Pisarn Wattana-wongkiri was quoted by newspaper The Nation as saying. The Fourth Army is in charge of the southern area.

Coming under direct rule of Bangkok in 1902, the kingdom's deepsouth community, used to belong to several small sultanates, is relatively remote to the central government and a handful separatists have continuously acted in the region.

With local separatist movement petering out in the late 1980's,the region has been disturbed by sporadic violence created by a handful of remaining separatists grouped with gangsters engaged indrug dealings, weapon smuggling and money laundry.

The region has fallen into spiraling violence since January 4, when armed men simultaneously torched down 20 schools, looted morethan 300 weapons and killed four soldiers.

Source: Xinhua