Surayud lauds Malaysian assistance

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said yesterday that the help of third parties, especially Malaysia, had seen progress towards talks with southern Malay separatists.

However, he said the final decision over dialogue with insurgent groups lay with Bangkok.

Surayud said talks could be arranged after he met Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in August during an official visit to Kuala Lumpur.

He said Indonesia and Malaysia have been helpful in offering advice as to how handle the crisis. He said these countries may have ethnic and cultural ties with the Malays in the deep South but they have always respected Thailand's territorial integrity.

The prime minister told a weekly television programme yesterday that several parties, including United Nations agencies and other international organisations and friendly governments, had offered help mediating talks aimed at ending the insurgency.

Three and a half years of unrest have seen more than 2,300 deaths in the Muslim-majority deep South.

Security officials blame daily attacks on a new generation of militants bent on discrediting the state.

Secret talks have been held with long-standing exiled separatist groups with a view to formal dialogue with the government. The authorities are hoping to use established groups such as the Pattani United Liberation Organi-sation and Barisan Revolusi Nasional to help quell the violence.

Links between the old guard and the current generation of insurgents is unclear; no one group has surfaced to take credit for daily attacks.

Meanwhile, violence continues in the deep South as security officials complain about the lack of sophisticated hardware to track insurgents.

Police Maj-General Panya Tiensart, commander of the Civilian-Police-Military Unit attached to the multi-agency Southern Border Provinces Administrative Command, said there were plans to purchase additional closed-circuit cameras to go with sophisticated scanners that would capture the faces of detained individuals and suspects.

He said these images would help authorities identify suspects appearing on the video images caught at crime scenes.

Separately, in Yala's Than To district, a member of the Tambon Than To Administrative Organisation, Abdulrahmae Sanateh, 53, was shot dead as he rode a motorcycle by a gunman armed with an automatic rifle.

In Narathiwat's Ra-ngae district, local villager Boonchana Dejkert, 57, suffered two bullet wounds fired by a gunman who followed him on a motorbike from behind.