Thai army in contact with Muslim south rebels

Bangkok, Oct 5: Several insurgent groups have approached Thai officials for talks to end nearly three years of unrest in the Muslim-majority south but they must first impose a ceasefire, the region's top general said today.

''Before any dialogue takes place, the insurgents must stop the violence for a month to show their sincerity,'' Lieutenant General Viroach Buacharoon, the rebellious region's fifth security chief in three years, told Reuters.

More than 1,700 people have died in daily shootings and bombings in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala since a January 2004 raid on a military barracks in which hundreds of rifles were stolen.

Viroach said contact was only at the early stage and between low-level officers and middlemen for the various unidentified insurgent groups operating in the area, an independent Malay-speaking sultanate until it was annexed a century ago by Thailand, then called Siam.

''The talks won't involve top-level officers,'' he said.

The army's openness to talks represents a major policy shift from the iron fist approach of Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted as prime minister in a military coup two weeks ago.

In the days running up to the putsch, army chief and coup leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin -- the first Muslim military leader in the predominantly Buddhist country -- clashed publicly with Thaksin's ministers over the possibility of talks.

Viroach said more than 10 groups were involved in the violence in the region, where 80 percent of people are Muslim and Malay-speaking, but declined to identify those in dialogue.

Security analysts believe the largest group is the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate, an off-shoot of the BRN, or National Revolutionary Front in Malay, which was created in the 1960s during the aggressive ''Siamisation'' of the south.

Other major groups are thought to be the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) and Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (Pattani Islamic Mujahideen Movement), which contains several Thai veterans of the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to military sources.

No group has come forward to claim responsibility for the unrest or state any political objectives.

Since the coup, there have been no major bombings in the south, although there appears to have been no let-up in small-scale shootings and arson attacks.

It is also questionable whether some of those involved in the violence are interested in any sort of political settlement.

''There is an element among the militants that doesn't really care who is in charge,'' said Brian Dougherty of Bangkok-based security consultancy Hill and Associates.

''Their goal is to create chaos and mayhem. There is no real attempt to establish anything. It's just violence.''

Reuters