Thailand seeks RI's aid to stop terror attack

Thailand seeks RI's aid to stop terror attack

Agencies, Bangkok

Indonesian authorities have agreed to keep tabs on Thai students
attending Islamic schools in the country to thwart possible
terrorist recruitment, Thailand's justice minister said on
Thursday.

Pongthep Thepkanchana said he made the surveillance request to
Indonesia's National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar on the
sidelines of a transnational crime meeting held by ministers of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Critics claim Islamic schools - known as madrassa - often
propagate fundamentalist ideas. Some have been accused of being
breeding grounds for extremism. Several alleged terrorist leaders
in South and Southeast Asia have been linked to the schools.

"There are some universities and schools there (in Indonesia)
that advocate violence," Pongthep said.

His request came four days after a series of coordinated
attacks in Muslim-dominated southern Thailand. Assailants set 20
government schools on fire and stormed an army base, killing four
soldiers and making off with more than 100 weapons.

Pongthep said terrorism was one of four major concerns he
discussed with Bachtiar, along with arms smuggling, money
laundering and drug trafficking.

The ASEAN plus three (ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea)
conference is considering how globalization has contributed to
making transnational crime a major regional problem.

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Bhokin Bhalakula called for urgent
measures and long-term solutions - including extradition treaties
and mutual legal assistance - to fight rising threats in
Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, officials said Thailand is investigating links
between a wave of violence in the mainly Muslim south and foreign
militant groups.

As helicopter-borne troops led security sweeps in the restive
south, some officials said they were convinced those behind the
attacks since Sunday had ties to foreign groups such as Jamaah
Islamiyah (JI), the Southeast Asian network linked to al-Qaeda.

The comments were the clearest yet from the government that
mainly Buddhist Thailand is facing an Islamic militancy far
bigger than previously believed.

Officials said the separatist Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani
(GMIP) may be behind Sunday's attacks and one of its leaders,
Jehbemae Buteh, was believed to be hiding in Malaysia.

"We believe Buteh is the leader of the group attacking
southern Thailand," Pallop Pinmanee, deputy chief of the Internal
Security Operations Command, said in a radio interview.

"The National Intelligence Agency received a tip-off in the
beginning of December that a group of 200 locally and
internationally trained terrorists had entered and started its
movement in southern Thailand," Pallop said.

Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya, a former army commander in the south
and now a government security adviser, said links between
militants in the region went back to the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan, when many foreign Muslims joined the mujahideen.

"Those people helped in the war, returned home and set up JI
in Indonesia," and groups in Malaysia and Thailand, he said.

"The question which became clear is why Hambali entered
Thailand. It's because he has a connection here."

Hambali, the Indonesian-born suspected JI operations chief, is
thought to have masterminded the Bali bombings in 2002. He was
captured in Thailand in August.

But, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who says the attackers
were "mainly involved with crime, arms smuggling and narcotics"
and "commuted" between Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia,
dismissed Kitti's comments as "outdated".

Thaksin, a rising regional political star who has worked hard
to draw foreign investment into a booming economy, said on
Wednesday the attackers were neither "international terrorist
groups like Jamaah Islamiyah" nor separatists.

Jamaah Islamiyah is seeking a pan-Islamic state encompassing
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines.
Thailand has put three southern provinces that border Malaysia,
and where most Muslims speak Malay, under martial law, since the
attacks.

Police complain they are getting little cooperation from local
people and Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura appealed to
Muslim leaders at a special prayer ceremony on Thursday to help
find the culprits.

"You can be sure that any tip you provide us, we will reward
you," Thammarak told the gathering at the army depot attacked on
Sunday.