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Thai PM orders riot police to clear Bangkok protesters

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej ordered thousands of riot police to move an anti-government crowd occupying his office compound, his spokesman said yesterday.

“The Prime Minister said it has to end today [Wednesday],” Samak’s chief spokesman Wichianchot Sukchotrat said. “Thousands of police will be deployed to move the protesters out of the Government House.”

Wichianchot said police would try to persuade the thousands of demonstrators to leave the lawn of Government House, normally the nerve center of the Thai administration, but if violence flared it would be met with “decisive actions.”

Earlier yesterday, Interior Minister Kowit Wattana, a former national police chief, suggested the authorities would continue to exercise restraint in the wake of the demonstrators’ siege and their occupation on Tuesday of several ministries and a state television station.

“I am begging to my fellow citizens to leave the Government House and hold a rally somewhere else where police will have no objection to it,” he told a news conference. “I don’t want to call this an ultimatum, more an appeal.”

A Thai court issued arrest warrants yesterday for nine leaders of an anti-government movement laying siege to the prime minister’s office in an attempt to force his Cabinet from power.

The warrants accuse the nine leaders of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) of inciting unrest and trying to overthrow the government, a crime that carries up to 15 years in prison.

It was unclear how police would arrest the nine, surrounded by thousands of flag-waving supporters at Samak’s headquarters.

Hundreds of protesters briefly formed a human shield around the PAD’s most vocal leaders — media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul and retired general Chamlong Srimuang.

Two thousand police took up position in and around the compound, although the only confrontation was in the early hours of yesterday when 15 people were injured in scuffles with police.
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