Bangkok - The new Thai government said Tuesday it will create an agency to oversee the three troubled southernmost provinces near Malaysia. An Islamic insurgency in the south is a government priority because the violence is causing suffering and threatens development as well as foreign perception of the country, Education Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said after the government's first cabinet meeting.
The new agency will have considerable freedom of action under a special minister to be appointed soon, Jurin said.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva later told the Thai News Agency that Suthep Thaugsuban, a deputy prime minister and veteran southern politician, would oversee the three southern provinces.
A long-simmering guerrilla campaign by local Malay Muslims seeking to separate from Thailand erupted almost five years ago, costing at least 3,500 lives since then.
Government initiatives have failed to blunt the violence that has forced many Thai Buddhists to move out of the mostly ethnic Malay provinces in fear of their lives.
Flooding the region with massive numbers of fresh troops will be neither sustainable nor effective, said Jurin. A variety of economic and cultural measures will be needed from the new five-party coalition to reduce the violence, he added.
Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was widely blamed for mishandling the insurgency by encouraging brutal security operations, and by dismantling a successful coordinating agency that he suspected of being too close to the Democrat Party.
