APEC security brings rare silence to Bangkok

APEC security brings rare silence to Bangkok

Ed Cropley, Reuters, Bangkok

Silence, so rare on a weekday Bangkok morning, descended on the
Thai capital on Monday as an unprecedented security clampdown for
U.S. President George W. Bush kept shoppers and workers at home.

Officials said 30,000 police and soldiers had been deployed
across the normally teeming city of 10 million people to ensure
the safety of the 21 leaders attending the two-day Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

At the heart of the security operation, scores of brown-
uniformed police ringed Bush's towering, white concrete hotel,
closing several major downtown roads in the area.

Pedestrians were prevented from walking near the building,
and, prepared for every eventuality, four fire trucks were
stationed at the hotel's corners.

But despite the road closures, Bangkok's notoriously static
traffic flowed with unexpected ease as many workers chose to heed
the government's request that everybody take an impromptu
national holiday.

"We are normally so busy at this time," said Ying, one of the
handful of employees twiddling their thumbs at a coffee shop
behind Bush's hotel.

Across the road, the vast World Trade Center shopping complex,
a warren-like temple to Asian consumerism, sat silent and empty
behind steel barricades erected to deter expected but absent
antiglobalization campaigners.

Skeleton staff in the few malls which opened were busy only
with stock-taking or cleaning. On the streets, not a noodle or
satay vendor stirred.

"I've never seen it like this," said Manley Waddell, a
Canadian living near Bush's hotel. "It seems more like a Sunday
evening than Monday morning.

The Thai government launched one of the largest security
operations in the country's history for the summit barely two
months after Southeast Asia's most wanted man was arrested just
north of Bangkok.

Indonesian-born Hambali, believed to be the operations chief
of Jamaah Islamiah and al-Qaeda's point man in the region, is
accused of being behind last year's bombs which killed 202 people
on the Indonesian island of Bali.