Thais play down fallout of Myanmar embassy siege

Thais play down fallout of Myanmar embassy siege

BANGKOK (Agencies) Thailand will not change its policy of sheltering dissidents and refugees despite last week's attack on Myanmar's embassy in Bangkok by five armed students, Thai officials said on Tuesday.

They also said the incident was unlikely to affect ties with neighboring Yangon.

Myanmar called for Bangkok on Tuesday to crack down on exiled dissidents, who Yangon claims are conducting terrorist activities from inside refugee camps in Thailand.

The call comes after the five gunmen calling themselves "Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors" took almost 40 people hostage at the Myanmar embassy here, before fleeing by helicopter to the Thai-Myanmar border Saturday.

Col. Thein Swe, a former military attache in Bangkok, said armed terrorist groups were hiding inside 24 "so-called refugee camps" in Thailand.

Myanmar accused Thailand on Monday of glorifying the gunmen after Bangkok called them student pro-democracy activists and even suggested that some foreigners taken hostage had helped to stage the attack. The gunmen took the hostages but later freed them and escaped.

"Yes, there is some sentiment (from Yangon) as the incident is still fresh, but that feeling will eventually evaporate," Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan told reporters.

"The long-standing and close relations between the two countries will not be affected by the incident and all aspects of cooperation will continue as usual," he said.

"Creating confidence is the top priority for the time being," Surin said, adding that Thailand had increased the number of security personnel at the Myanmar embassy.

Myanmar's military government had also agreed to step up security at the Thai embassy in Yangon, Surin said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sukhumbhand Paribatra said: "The action of a few people will not change the long-standing Thai humanitarian policy. Thailand is the Buddhist nation where we provide sheltering for people who run away from suffering and seek help and refuge. One incident cannot make us change this policy."

Thailand provides shelter for dissident Myanmar students after Yangon killed thousands of pro-democracy supporters in late 1988.

Sukhumbhand and another Thai official were taken by the embassy attackers as guarantors of safe passage in a helicopter. The attackers released them after making their escape at a town along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Myanmar on Tuesday urged Thailand to strictly control camps for Myanmar refugees, which it said harbored anti-Yangon terrorists including those who stormed the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok last week.

At a news conference in Yangon, Thein Swe referred to the Thai refugee camps, which harbor over 100,000 displaced people from Myanmar, as places where "terrorists received explosives, weapons and political training."

He said those responsible for the embassy siege had returned to the Maneeloy holding center in central Ratchaburi province -- where about 1,000 Myanmar asylum-seekers await application for resettlement in third countries.