"We have had the Hmong problem for a long time at Ban Winai camp, Wat Tham Krabok and now Phetchabun, and it is because of Vang Pao," Lao Ambassador to Thailand Hiem Phommachanh said.

 Vang Pao is the Hmong leader who led the community in helping the US Central Intelligence Agency fight Communists in the 1960s and 1970s. He has been living in the US since the end of the Vietnam war.

 Thailand has sheltered Hmong ethnic refugees since the fall of Vientiane to the Communist Pathet Lao movement in 1975.

 They used to live in the Ban Winai refugee camp in Northeastern Nakhon Phanom province and at Wat Tham Krabok in Saraburi, but these facilities were shut down after the refugees were resettled in the US.  About 6,500 Hmong are now living in Phetchabun's Ban Huay Nam Khao.

They say they are associated with the CIA's fighters and that they recently fled suppression in Laos recently.

 Hiem said, "They came to Phetchabun only in the hope of resettlement to the US."

 He made the comments as part of a special lecture to the National Economic and Social Advisory Council on relations between Thailand and Laos yesterday.

It is rare for a Lao official to speak about the ethnic Hmong refugees in Phetchabun.

 The Hmong in Laos, most of whom live in remote areas, did not know about resettlement opportunities in the US until agitators told them about the possibility, the ambassador said.

 Officially, Vientiane says the Hmong in Phetchabun are Thailand's domestic problem and has refused to take them back saying Bangkok has failed to prove they are really Lao citizens.

 To solve the Hmong problem at its root, the ambassador said, the human traffickers who urge and facilitate their entry into Thailand need to be dealt with.

 "We have to find out who is behind the migration of the Hmong: Thais, Americans or people in Laos," Hiem said, stressing that all three countries are obligated to deal firmly with any of their citizens involved in human trafficking.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

The Nation