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PATTAYA, Thailand: Anti-government protesters attacked Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's car and trapped him inside a beach hotel on Tuesday as the kingdom's political turmoil boiled over into violence.
The supporters of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra smashed the window of a vehicle carrying Abhisit as he escaped from the luxury resort in the coastal town of Pattaya, where he had been holding a Cabinet meeting.
The clash stoked tensions a day before a mass rally in Bangkok, where Thaksin loyalists have besieged Abhisit's offices since March 26, and raised security fears ahead of a summit of Asian leaders in Pattaya on Friday.
"There was a little incident, that's why I was a bit late," Abhisit, who was unhurt, told a special sitting of parliament later in Bangkok.
The protesters want British-born Abhisit to dissolve parliament and call elections, but he has said his four-month-old government must stay to resolve problems that have plagued Thailand since Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 coup.
The mounting unrest has prompted widespread speculation that the military could again step in to stabilise the country as it heads into recession, but the armed forces chief denied there would be another putsch.
"The Thai military is acting under the law in supporting the work of the government... It's impossible that military will mount a coup similar to 2006," supreme commander General Songkitti Jaggabatara said.
In the latest unrest, about 400 of Thaksin's so-called "Red Shirts" surrounded Abhisit's hotel in Pattaya on Tuesday and prevented him and his ministers from leaving for several hours, witnesses said.
Oxford-educated Abhisit had moved the meeting to the resort on the Gulf of Thailand to avoid the blockade of Government House in the capital.
But after he finally left the hotel about 50 of the demonstrators, many of them female, chased his black BMW and pelted it with plastic bottles when it stopped at a traffic light, television footage showed.
Police moved the premier to a silver SUV, but the demonstrators pulled open the door and began to beat the driver, before clashing with police and shattering the rear window with a motorcycle helmet.
Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said he had ordered police to arrest the assailants.
"This is not a peaceful protest. They have violated the law, the government already warned them that they will be prosecuted," he said.
The government insisted that the clashes would not derail an upcoming summit in Pattaya which groups leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus regional partners including China and Japan.
The meeting was postponed from December due to the unrest in Thailand.
"The 'Red Shirts' protest will not affect foreign leaders attending the summit," said Vitawas Srivihok, the senior ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) department official at Thailand's foreign ministry.
The Red Shirts are increasingly copying the tactics of rival, yellow-clad demonstrators who helped to drive Thaksin's allies from government in December with a street campaign including a blockade of Bangkok's airports.
They say they expect up to 300,000 people to attend a rally in Bangkok outside Government House on Wednesday. Police said they are anticipating about 70,000 protesters.
Thaksin, who is living in exile to avoid a two-year jail term imposed last year over corruption allegations, has fired up his supporters with a series of video speeches over the past two weeks.
In a televised national address late Monday, Abhisit rejected suggestions that Thailand was on the brink of "civil war" but warned that the government would not tolerate any violence or insults to the monarchy during the protests.
The country remains deeply divided between Thaksin's followers among the urban and rural poor and his foes in the traditional power cliques of the palace, military and bureaucracy.
- AFP/ir
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