here is something usual.

Thought I should post it here,rather than in extremism due to the biased modding there.



"AN ISLAMIC separatist group claims it is in secret talks with the Thai Government to resolve the insurgency in the country's southern Muslim-majority provinces, days after the parliament rubber-stamped sweeping emergency powers to deal with the problem.

The Government spent four days last week in closed-door sessions with the Pattani United Liberation Organisation in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to a spokesman for group.

Thai military officials in the south would not comment on whether the talks took place.

The organisation, known as Pulo, which says it is fighting to reclaim a land for Muslims in southern Thailand, has denied ties to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah and said it rejected the practice of suicide bombings.

"We have no connection with those terrorists," the senior member of Pulo, which campaigned against the Thai government in the 1970s and 1980s, told Reuters in a rare interview.

"Our struggle is for our own people, to get back what is rightfully ours," said the spokesman, who did not want to be identified."


http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/muslim-threat-to-bangkok-tourism/2005/08/30/1125302514048.html


now, they have upped the ante .......

"A GRENADE blast wounded 34 anti-government protesters in Bangkok, Thai television stations reported today, the latest escalation in the country's increasingly violent political crisis.

The blast occurred around midnight at Government House, where thousands of supporters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), who have occupied the prime minister's compound since August in a bid to unseat him, were attending a rally.

Channel 3 television showed footage of the wounded being rushed to hospital in pickup trucks.

"I had come down from the stage about 30 minutes before the grenade dropped into a crowded area," PAD leader Suriyasai Katasila told Channel 3.

He blamed pro-government supporters for the attack, which came hours after the PAD tightened its grip on Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi international airport, attacking police checkpoints set up to stop more people from joining the blockade.

The airport sit-in, aimed at forcing out Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, has paralysed flights, has stranded thousands of passengers and sparked rumours of a military coup, even though the army chief has said he will not seize control.

The Government said tourism was suffering and the number of visitors to Thailand could fall by half next year. "

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24728955-601,00.html

"........Last week the bodies of scores of Muslim teenage boys lay strewn around Pattani's Krue Se mosque, victims of the bloodiest Thai security crackdown since the 1970s. Seven of the dead are believed to have been Indonesians, strengthening fears that Jemaah Islamiah, the Indonesian-based al-Qaeda affiliate, had conscripted Thai Muslims for the first time.

"The parents of these teenagers buried them as Islamic warriors. They made sure their bodies were not washed, which symbolises that they were already purified in a holy war," said Associate Professor Mark Askew, chair of the International Studies program at Victoria University of Technology........"

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/07/1083911410849.html

Asian muslims- twice as dangerous.