NU leader meets Thai PM Thaksin on southern unrest
NU leader meets Thai PM Thaksin on southern unrest
Boonradom Chitradon, Agence France-Presse/Bangkok
The head of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world's largest Islamic
group, began a mission here on Monday that Thailand hopes will
help ease tensions in the Muslim-majority south where an
insurgency is raging.
The Indonesia-based NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi, leading a five-
member team here, met Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra early
Monday to discuss the conflict that has claimed more than 630
lives since January 2004.
Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said the two men
agreed the militants were using religion to fuel the violence,
and that improved education in the Muslim-dominated south was key
to boosting living standards and ending economic problems in the
region.
Hasyim was granted a royal audience with King Bhumibol
Adulyadej on Monday evening, and was due to meet Buddhist and
Muslim religious leaders and to travel with his team through the
southern provinces along the Malaysian border, Kantathi said.
"He said misunderstandings could be solved if we speak frankly
and exchange information," Kantathi added.
Thailand hopes the visit by the NU team will help improve the
situation in the violence-wracked south, where one man was shot
dead at the weekend and 15 were injured after militants bombed
and ambushed a maintenance car carrying police and soldiers on a
railway.
Another five people, including one policeman and one former
policeman, were injured in a shooting on late Sunday when two men
on motorcycle opened fire on people sitting outside a house in
Pattani's Sai Buri district.
"We hope the visit will help, as their mission represents the
Muslim world coming here to find the truth," Kantathi said.
Hasyim warned that "a military approach only makes the
fundamentalists more and more strong."
"Problem solving is not only with a military approach, but
also a justice approach, an economic approach, and also an
educational approach," he said.
On Wednesday, Hasyim is due to travel to Thailand's south to
meet with chairmen of provincial Islamic committees in the Muslim
majority provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.
He is also set to visit a royal project and an Islamic school
in Pattani province, and also to meet the chairman of the
southern military command.
Hasyim, who was invited by Thailand to visit, also plans to
meet with the Indonesian community in Bangkok on Thursday before
returning Friday to Indonesia.
The visit comes amid a flurry of efforts aimed at stemming the
violence that has proven one of the most intractable problems
facing Thaksin's government.
Thaksin on late Monday announced the 48 members of a National
Reconciliation Commission comprising activists, senior
politicians and government officials.
The commissioners included a Buddhist monk and 11 Muslims. Its
mission is to propose ways to foster peace and reconciliation in
the mostly Muslim and ethnic Malay southern provinces.
Parliament was also preparing for its first joint session in
more than a decade to debate the insurgency, beginning Wednesday.
The last joint session of the 500-seat lower House of
Representatives and the 200-member Senate was in May 1992, in the
midst of bloody pro-democracy demonstrations that shook Thailand
to its foundations.