Thai PM, saying spasm of violence over, calls for national unity

Thai PM, saying violence quelled, calls for unity

BANGKOK — Claiming order has been restored after a spasm of violence, Thailand’s prime minister made an emotional appeal to the nation Friday to heal the political wounds that divide it. But one of his senior advisors said the rifts are increasing pressure on him to call elections to prove he has the public mandate.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the focus has shifted from securing the country to restoring normal routines, particularly in Bangkok, where a two-month confrontation between his government and so-called Red Shirt protesters who want him to resign left at least 84 dead.

“We will continue to move swiftly to restore normalcy and we recognize that as we move ahead there are huge challenges,” Abhisit said in a televised address. “Let me reassure you that the government will meet those challenges.”

Bangkok remains in a state of emergency and under a nighttime curfew through the weekend, its first since a pro-democracy uprising against a military government in 1992. But with the sound of gunfire and explosions silenced, a major bank and department store announced it will open 92 branches nationwide from Saturday. The curfew in Pattaya, a popular beach resort, was lifted Friday.

In Bangkok’s Chinatown, many of the gold and food shops reopened and the streets were teeming with life and traffic. Many other businesses, train services and schools stayed shuttered as clean-up operations continued to clear the streets where the worst fighting took place.

Troops and police in the capital conducted searches of high-rise buildings and hotels to check for bombs or boobytraps left behind by the demonstrators, whose main encampment in an upscale commercial quarter of Bangkok was cleared in a bloody military operation Wednesday that left 15 dead and more than 100 injured.

Thai media reported that grenades were found in front of an office building, along with a gas container attached to a truck parked near a bridge. If it had detonated, the reports said, it could have caused the bridge to collapse.

Pornthip Rojanasunand, director of Thailand’s Central Institute of Forensic Science, told The Associated Press a body was found in the fire-gutted Central World shopping mall, which was among dozens of buildings torched as the demonstrators retreated after the crackdown, blackening the city skyline.

“We can certainly repair damaged infrastructure and buildings, but the important thing is to heal the emotional wounds and restore unity among the Thai people,” Abhisit said. “Fellow citizens, we all live in the same house.”

“Now, our house has been damaged,” he said. “We have to help each other.”

Other top officials acknowledged that although the violence was subsiding, the larger problem was far from solved and said the underlying divisions facing the country — and the Abhisit government — are daunting.

“The protests ending really is only the beginning of a difficult healing and reconciliation process that the country and its people need to go through,” Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said Friday while on a trip to Tokyo. “Our term ends in 2012. It is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that the government will choose to stay for the full term.”

Earlier this month, Abhisit had offered to hold elections on Nov. 14 — which Red Shirt leaders had seemed amenable to before making fresh demands that scuppered a possible deal. Abhisit did not mention early elections in his address Friday.

Even so, Korn suggested the elections could still be held at that time. He stressed, however, that it is crucial emotions have cooled before any election so that candidates from all parties would feel safe campaigning.

“Frankly, we would not feel safe doing that today,” he said.

There is strong anti-government sentiment in the poor, rural north and northeast, home to many of the Red Shirt protesters who feel that the government has forgotten them. They believe the Oxford-educated Abhisit and his government is elitist and came to power illegitimately.

Concerns remained that the Red Shirt movement, which supports ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, could foment unrest throughout the country for months or even years to come. Thaksin, who lives in exile after his 2006 ouster in a military coup and subsequent conviction for corruption, has denied bankrolling the unrest, but said he supports the Red Shirts’ cause.

By Friday, most of the Red Shirts’ leadership had either been arrested or surrendered. Many were being held south of Bangkok for interrogation.

But Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a lower-level Red Shirt leader in Bangkok, distributed a statement from the group Friday saying unrest will continue unless the government takes responsibility for the bloodshed, the curfews are lifted, troops withdrawn and Abhisit’s administration immediately resigns.

“If the government wants to see peace, they have to answer these demands, or violence will not stop,” the statement said. Somyot was detained shortly after he distributed the statement and then released, a colleague said.

The Red Shirts streamed into Bangkok in mid-March and set up an encampment in the historic part of the city, before shifting to the commercial district. Over the two months of protests, clashes with security forces left a total of 84 people dead — the vast majority of them Red Shirts.

The final holdouts were taken from a Buddhist temple that was used as a sanctuary, mainly by women and children too afraid to leave.

AP reporters Jocelyn Gecker, Vijay Joshi, Grant Peck and Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok, and Malcolm Foster and Tomoko Hosaka in Tokyo contributed to this report. Additional research by Warangkana Tempati.