Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of Thailand met Sunday with leaders of the anti-government protest movement here, the first significant effort to defuse two weeks of street protests. The meeting, an unscripted and unusual face-off among hardened political rivals that was carried live on Thailand's main television channels, failed to make progress on the primary demand of protesters, that new elections be called. Both sides agreed to meet again on Monday. 'All of us now have only one question,' Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader at the meeting, asked the prime minister. 'Will you dissolve Parliament or not?' Abhisit, looking uncomfortable at times, said he would 'make a decision based on a consensus from the entire country' and questioned whether new elections would solve Thailand's four-year-old political crisis. The talks came as the capital was hit by several weekend grenade attacks that wounded soldiers, the latest in a spate of such episodes in the past two weeks. The demonstrators, who are known as red shirts, number in the tens of thousands and have become increasingly assertive. On Saturday they demanded that soldiers stop guarding the government district where the protests are taking place. The military agreed and removed hundreds of troops from all but one main government office. The protesters, many of whom are supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister removed in a 2006 coup, are mainly from the poorer strata of society and include a large number of farmers. They criticize the influence of what they call the 'aristocracy' and cite the coup and two court decisions that banned Thaksin-backed political parties as events that have stifled the voices of a majority of citizens. Critics of the red shirts accuse them of being the foot soldiers of Thaksin, whose five years in power bitterly divided the nation. Thaksin, who lives abroad, has been convicted of abusing power and using his office to advance his business interests. The three protest leaders were generally cordial in the meeting on Sunday, patiently jotting notes when the prime minister spoke, in contrast to the fiery speeches in which they have denounced Abhisit as a puppet of the elite and the military. The meeting room was quiet enough to hear water being poured. But tensions remained close to the surface. Weng Tohjirakarn, a protest leader, warned the prime minister that the government was faced with a battle between a small elite and a 'huge number from the lower classes.' Abhisit had initially refused to meet with the protest leaders but changed his mind, 'to bring back the peace and to avoid possible violence and confrontation,' an official said. 