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Thai parliament meets to address southern unrest

A rare joint session of Thailand's parliament opened yesterday to debate the year-long insurgency in the Muslim south, amid a series of new initiatives taking a softer approach to the problem.

"I urge all members to turn toward compromise and abandon personal prejudices for the sake of reconciliation," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said as he opened the session. "My government will consider all suggestions."

"One of the country's longstanding problems is the unrest, which has caused almost daily losses, and my government wants to brainstorm ideas for measures to effectively uproot the problem," Thaksin told 700 lawmakers from the Senate and House of Representatives.

The joint session -- the first since 1992 -- came amid a series of initiatives aimed at ending the violence, marking a change of tactic for Thaksin. He has faced widespread criticism at home and abroad for his heavy-handed response to the insurgency that has claimed more than 630 lives since January last year.

In the latest violence two people were shot dead on Monday in the southern provinces of Narithawat and Pattani, police said yesterday.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, opposition Democrat leader, blamed the government for underestimating the problem, accused Thaksin of impatience and condemned extrajudicial killings in the area.

"On many occasions the prime minister liked to set deadlines that put pressure on government officials and looked for instant answers that were wrong, such as blaming the problem on drugs, unemployed teenagers or dual citizenship," he said.

The problem was worsened by events overseas, including the 2001 attacks on the US, the resulting "war on terror" and Thailand's decision to send troops to Iraq, Abhisit added.

"We have to contain [the unrest], not to allow it to become a regional or international problem," he said.

Three incidents last year -- the disappearance of Muslim lawyer Somchai Leenapaijit, bloody clashes that ended with the siege of the Krue Se mosque on April 28, and the deaths of at least 85 protesters while in custody in Tak Bai on Oct. 25 -- sent the problem spiralling out of control, Abhisit said.

Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party won a landslide re-election last month in the mainly Buddhist country. But it failed to win a single seat in the Muslim south, where Democrats dominate.

But Thaksin, who shortly after the Tak Bai incident said the protesters had died because they were weak from fasting for Ramadan, has lately pushed a softer and more open approach.

His government on Tuesday allocated more than 28.4 million baht (US$721,000) compensation for the families of 85 Muslims killed and seven missing from Tak Bai. They died after security forces piled almost 1,300 protesters onto trucks and kept them there for almost six hours. Most victims died through suffocation while some broke their necks.

The protesters were demanding the release of six men arrested for allegedly giving guns to Muslim rebels.

Also this week, a five-member team from Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Islamic group, is on a peace mission here at the invitation of Thaksin's government.
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