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BANGKOK: Thailand's embattled prime minister on Tuesday urged anti-government "Red Shirt" protesters to commit to his reconciliation plan and pack up their demonstration site after they refused to end rallies.
Protest leaders have agreed to premier Abhisit Vejjajiva's reconciliation roadmap to November elections, but said they would continue street rallies until the deputy premier was charged over a deadly crackdown.
"If protesters want to join the reconciliation process, they cannot only accept an election date. They have to stop their rally," Abhisit told reporters, adding he thought the Reds should disperse on on Wednesday.
"If the situation does not return to normal it will delay the election day, so protesters should go home on the 12th (of May)," he said.
Red leaders earlier vowed to continue their rally until deputy premier Suthep Thaungsuban was charged for his role overseeing a deadly April 10 crackdown, when armed troops attempted to clear part of the capital.
Suthep went to the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) on Tuesday to hear a complaint against him after Reds demanded he turn himself in to police, but Red leaders refused to disband until a formal case was opened against him.
"We don't accept it - Suthep did not go there as a suspect," leader of the red-clad protest movement, Nattawut Saikuar, said from a stage in the demonstrators' sprawling encampment in the heart of Bangkok.
"We are ready to stop rallying once Suthep walks up the first step of the justice system as a suspect," he added.
Thailand is reeling from the worst political violence in almost two decades, with 29 people killed and almost 1,000 injured in a series of confrontations and attacks in the capital.
Twenty-five people died on April 10 after a crackdown sparked violent street battles between troops and protesters, who have occupied part of Bangkok for two months while demanding elections.
Suthep, who faces complaints from relatives of some of those who died, told reporters that he was willing to enter the justice process and expected to be exonerated because the capital was under emergency rule.
"The public can be reassured that the state of emergency gives protection to all security forces involved in the crackdown operation," he said.
Abhisit has warned he may scrap the plan for early elections if the protesters do not leave their vast base, which has been fortified with barricades made from piles of fuel-soaked tyres, bamboo poles and razor wire.
The Red Shirts called for the government to lift the state of emergency so the protesters could return home safely, but army chief General Anupong Paojinda said the special laws would remain in place until order was restored.
Leaders of the mainly poor and working class Reds, who broadly support fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, asked a Bangkok court on Tuesday for arrest warrants against them to be dropped, but their petition was rejected.
The protest movement said on Monday that it had no objection to Abhisit's proposal to dissolve parliament in the second half of September for elections on November 14, dropping a previous demand for a specific dissolution date.
Crowds at the Reds' camp, which swelled to as many as 100,000 people in the early days, dwindled to just a few thousand last week as a resolution appeared near and thunder storms dumped heavy rain on the garbage-strewn protest site.
But their ranks were boosted over the weekend by 5,000 more supporters who arrived from the movement's heartland in the impoverished rural northeast, defying a ban on rallies in the capital, which is under a state of emergency.
The Reds consider Abhisit's administration undemocratic because it came to power in a 2008 parliamentary vote after a controversial court ruling ousted elected allies of Thaksin, who was himself unseated in a 2006 coup. - AFP/de
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