Thaksin takes charge amid anger over soldiers' murder
The Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has promised to take personal charge of restoring law and order in the country's south as the hunt continues for the insurgents who tortured and killed two soldiers last week.
Malaysia has expressed concern about the growing conflict and suggested the Association of South-East Asian Nations step in to help resolve the bloodshed.
"We would like to remind the Thai authorities that whatever happens in south Thailand will be felt here," Malaysia's Education Minister, Hishammudin Hussein, told the New Straits Times. "It is not that we are interfering but being so close geographically, we will inevitably feel the effects."
Mr Thaksin said the marines' killing was strictly a domestic affair but said "in theory" he should talk to Malaysia to ask it to stop militants crossing the border. He would not say if he would seek such talks. He has previously rejected insurgents' attempts to internationalise the problem.
Three weeks ago, 131 Thai Muslims fled to Malaysia and sought refugee status. Despite Thai protests, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agreed to assess their claims.
"I will take responsibility for anything that goes wrong from now. If I don't do the job well during the next three years, don't vote me back in," Mr Thaksin said in his weekly radio address. "If I violate the law you can seek legal action against me."
The savage nature of the killings has jolted the Thai public, which has become largely immune to the daily death toll of insurgents, ordinary people, police and military in the Muslim-majority southern provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani. Observers fear an angry public may demand an aggressive response.
"The public is very angry and emotional at this time," said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "We are urging the National Reconciliation Commission to calm down the people. They are fearful, angry and sad. There is 25 times the violence in the south [compared with 2003]."
The two marines, who had worked in the area for up to 10 years and could speak the local dialect, were called to Tanyong Limo village in Narathiwat to investigate a teashop shooting that killed two villagers and left four wounded last Tuesday. Locals believed soldiers had been involved in the teashop attack. The marines were mobbed and taken hostage.
The kidnappers then demanded Malaysian journalists be brought in to cover the story as they did not trust the Thai media to give a fair account of the situation. The negotiators agreed to the demand, a decision later criticised by Mr Thaksin, but by the time the journalists arrived the hostages had been killed.