PM tells Thailand to brace for more bombs

BANGKOK, Jan 4 (Reuters) Army-installed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont today told Thailand to prepare for repeats of the bomb attacks which killed three people and wounded 38 in Bangkok on New Year's Eve.

''I would like to ask our brothers and sisters to brace themselves for a life-threatening thing like this for a while,'' Surayud told the National Legislative Council, which is acting as a parliament in the wake of a September 19 military coup.

He gave no details.

His comments are likely to keep the nine million inhabitants of the sprawling capital on edge after a string of bomb hoaxes and scares since the New Year. Thai media reported false alarms at a government office and major shopping mall today.

The identity of those behind the bombings, which knocked 4 percent off the stock market as investors feared political violence in 2007, remains a mystery, although post-coup ministers are pointing the finger at dissident soldiers and police.

However, the government has provided no evidence to back up its claims, which most Thais interpret as implicating ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, now in exile in Beijing, and his allies still in the country.

Defence Minister General Boonrod Somtat continued to rule out foreign terrorist groups and Muslim militants fighting Bangkok's rule in the far south, despite some similarities in style.

''So, there are only those inside the country left -- the civilians, police and armed forces both in khaki and green,'' he told reporters.

''Intelligence puts 90 per cent weight on political issues.

There is a political group in which a few people have the potential to do such a thing,'' he said, without elaborating.

''People who can handle this involve civilians, police and military officers.'' Thaksin, a former police lieutenant-colonel, has denied any involvement in the bombings, which prompted the United States, Britain and Australia to issue travel advisories to its citizens.

WHAT EVIDENCE? Diplomats said a Foreign Ministry briefing today had failed to provide much by way of reassurance or answers.

''There was no evidence whatsoever,'' one diplomat said. ''It was not exactly enlightening.'' Ministry spokesman Kitti Wasinondh told a news conference that investigators were struggling to find witnesses and that much of their work centred on security footage and forensics. 'It might be some time for the results of that to come,'' he said.

General Saprang Kalayanamitr, the most outspoken member of the Council for National Security (CNS), as the coup leaders now call themselves, said the authorities had video surveillance tapes from two of the bomb sites but no clear suspects.

''The people who did it must have been trained for that, or familiar with it. Gangsters, mafia or well-known people were not able to do it,'' he told a Bangkok radio station.

Security analysts said it was impossible to rule out completely the groups behind the campaign of violence in the three southernmost provinces, the only Muslim-majority region of overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand.

Since that campaign began with a raid on an army barracks on Janaury 4, 2004, more than 1,800 people have died in daily shootings and bombings.

But the violence has never moved outside the immediate vicinity of the Malay-speaking provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, which Bangkok annexed a century ago.

Although many of the bombs in the far south have used ammonium nitrate fertiliser as explosive -- as did the Bangkok bombs -- analysts said their wide geographical spread across the capital was very different.

''This has to be in some fashion linked to the former regime -- but that's such an enormous pool of people,'' said security analyst Brian Dougherty of Hill and Associates in Bangkok.

REUTERS DKA BS1517