Australia to have police in Bangkok

Australia to have police in Bangkok

AUSTRALIA: An Australian Federal Police adviser will be stationed permanently in Bangkok under new formalized ties with Thai police as the two countries step up their crackdown on Islamic terrorism, officials said on Tuesday.

Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty and the Commissioner General of the Royal Thai Police, Sant Srutanont, were due to sign a memorandum of understanding in Bangkok on later Tuesday.

The announcement came a week after the arrest by police in Thailand of three Thais suspected of planning bomb attacks against Western embassies and a tourist spot in Bangkok.

Keelty said last October's Bali bombings which claimed 202 lives demonstrated the importance of formal agreements between countries to enable swift and flexible use of resources. --AFP

;AP;KOD; ANPAu..r.. Aglance-Laos-journalists Detained journalists tell their story JP/11/ASEAN

Detained reporters tell their story

THAILAND: As two European journalists were trekking back from a 10-day assignment covering Hmong rebels in deep jungle in Laos, they came across a military patrol and witnessed a firefight with the rebels in which a local militiaman died.

Now the two freelance journalists and a U.S. citizen who worked as their interpreter are being detained for alleged involvement in the killing.

That's the account given by a Canadian schoolteacher, Patrick Moisy, of the capture of Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise and French cameraman Vincent Reynaud. Moisy, of Montreal, spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on Monday night.

Moisy met the two journalists a day after their arrest on June 4 in the northeastern Laotian province of Xieng Khouang. --AP