Thailand revives agency to tackle Muslim insurgency

BANGKOK, Oct 24 (Reuters) Thailand's post-coup government agreed today to revive a multi-agency body credited with keeping the peace in the now rebellious far south but dissolved by deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The cabinet approved in principle reviving the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre and told the ministers of justice, defence and interior to work out the details, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told reporters.

''The SBPAC should be up and running by early next month and will allow more participation of the people and give fairness and justice,'' Surayud said.

He gave no details of how the agency would be structured after the Army and the National Security Council suggested last week it should be revived four years after Thaksin disbanded it.

The SBPAC, which worked on rural development projects and investigated complaints of injustice and corruption, was liked by the Muslim Malay speakers of the region, an Islamic sultanate until Bangkok annexed it a century ago.

Thaksin said the body was no longer necessary to deal with ''petty thugs'' and disbanded it. In January 2004, the latest rebellion erupted against rule by predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

Even when Thaksin, now in self-exile in London, disbanded the body which included local representatives and settled disputes, analysts said he had made a serious mistake.

The government had cut its link with local people who trusted it, they said, but Thaksin pursued a policy based largely on force and put his own people in charge.

Since the militancy erupted again following a period of calm after a previous insurgency faded away in the early 1980s, more than 1,700 people have been killed in daily drive-by shootings and bomb attacks.

Analysts said the new SBPAC would have to be modernised to deal with an insurgency radically different from the jungle-based guerrilla rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s.

Now, the militants, who have never claimed responsibility for acts of violence in which civilians and civil servants are also targets along with security forces or set out their aims in public, are based in villages.

''I don't think the SBPAC will stop the daily shooting and bombing attacks immediately,'' said Chidchanok Rahimmula of the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, one of the three provinces hit by the violence.

''But at least the agency that the people used to trust is brought back and the government will have to utilise that trust by giving justice to win their hearts and minds,'' she said.

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