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YALA, Thailand : Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed Thursday to crush the Islamic separatist revolt in the south within four years, after unveiling plans to cut off funding to pro-rebel villages.
Thaksin, making his first visit to the southern provinces since his party's landslide re-election victory earlier this month, has said he would cut funding to more than 350 villages deemed to be sympathetic to the militants.
"I will eradicate it (the separatist movement) within the next four years," the period of his second term, Thaksin told reporters before touring southernmost Yala province, which with neighbouring Narathiwat and Pattani has bourne the brunt of the unrest.
"We must be decisive today otherwise we will not be able to crack down on them," he said of Islamic separatists.
The revolt has left more than 590 people dead since January last year.
Surrounded by a massive security detail, the premier appeared to signal a new, harder approach to militancy reminiscent of his 2003 anti-drugs policy which stirred controversy for its strongarm tactics.
The "drugs war" claimed at least 2,500 lives.
Thaksin said Wednesday that areas prone to unrest and judged to be sympathetic to militants would be identified as "red zones" and denied crucial government funding.
"I don't want money going towards supporting insurgents in red-zone villages, to be used to buy bombs and guns," he told thousands of villagers Wednesday in Yala's Betong district near the Malaysian border.
"I have to do this, I have to cut their support," he said. "I won't accept them here and I will do everything to keep our sovereignty."
Thaksin said that of 1,580 villages in the three southernmost provinces, 358 are listed as "red", including some 200 in Narathiwat alone.
Two hundred are deemed "yellow", meaning there is moderate resistance to the state but most residents disagree with the insurgent cause, while the rest are "green" areas where 90 percent of residents abide by the law.
Thaksin said he hoped the policy - first used in Thailand during the fight against communist insurgents in the 1970s and 80s - could pressure villagers into informing on militants or severing ties with them.
Religious leaders criticised the plan as discriminatory.
"I totally reject the idea, because every village has an equal right to the national budget," Neemu Magajeh, deputy chairman of the Yala Provincial Islamic Committee, said in the Nation newspaper.
Others reportedly said it could increase poverty and push villagers towards support of insurgents.
Although Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party scored an overwhelming victory in February 6 elections, it failed to win a single seat in four southern Muslim provinces.
Thaksin had scheduled three days to visit the south but abruptly departed the region Thursday one day after his arrival, citing a need to attend a rally for a party colleague running in a by-election in the northeast.
The deep south had been rattled by four separate bomb blasts wounding 12 people within 24 hours before Thaksin's arrival.
Before his departure he paid a surprise visit to a controversial Islamic school, the Thammavithaya Foundation in Yala, whose founder stands accused of terrorism.
The school's Sapae-ing Baso was fingered by Thaksin in December as the mastermind of the insurgency.
Four other Islamic teachers were caught in Yala and charged with terrorism, which carries the death penalty, but Sapae-ing has eluded capture.
In a speech at the school, Thaksin reiterated his tough line on southern violence.
"I will not allow a single square inch to be separated (from Thailand), even if blood covers the land," he said.
Thaksin and his government have long accused teachers at private Islamic boarding schools of inciting unrest in the majority Buddhist kingdom's south. - AFP
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