Malaysia-Thai relations are tempered by an irreconcilable problem - the four Malay provinces of south Thailand. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur views them through their respective national perspectives, making a permanent solution all but impossible.

When Britain demarcated its colonial borders with Thailand in 1897, Bangkok ceded sovereignty of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu but retained Pattani, Narathiwat, Satun, Yala. The Malays in southern Thailand then fought with Bangkok for a Muslim space in a Buddhist nation.

Bangkok tolerated it though, in the main, did little to correct the grievances. Over the past five decades, especially after Kuala Lumpur's independence from Britain in 1957, this plight of the southern Malay Thais has attracted attention.

All post-independence Malaysian prime ministers - from Tunku Abdul Rahman to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi - have had an important role in the southern Malay Thai convulsions. None would talk about it, but the hidden Malaysian hand was clear.

The Malay Thais, at that time, wanted to be in Malaysia. But the Thai government in Bangkok wanted to preserve its territorial integrity.

The bilateral suspicion springs from these differing perceptions. It lasts to this day. Malaysian intelligence and other officials have rushed to southern Thailand, most recently last week, as the violence escalated.

But for once, the Malaysian involvement was ill-disguised. In the early 1970s, I met a Thai Malay rebel from the Pattani United Liberation Organisation or Pulo in Kuala Lumpur, who had come to meet then Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, no less. She did not, but she saw lesser officials from his office.

But at the time, her presence did not surprise. There was open talk of the several Malay Thai rebel groups vying for Malaysian support, working their way through numerous Umno officials. One unmentioned foreign policy view was support for minority Malays in foreign countries fighting for their own space, if not independence.

'Hot pursuit'

It was the Tunku in the early 1960s who persuaded the Acehnese fighting for independence from Jakarta to transfer its government-in-exile from Holland to Malaysia; its ambassador, in his 80s, lives in quiet retirement in a town outside Kuala Lumpur.

With him came 10,000 Acehnese, sent to the Felda agricultural schemes. Kuala Lumpur had also encouraged the Muslim Moros in southern Philippines to secede from the government in Manila, and allowed about 100,000 of them to settle in Sabah.

But this interest was half-hearted. Less than four decades later, Kuala Lumpur pulled the plug, sending back Moro and Acehnese rebels to certain death or continued rebellion; among the leaders it deserted were Nur Misuari and Hashim Selamat.

There is a suggestion that Kuala Lumpur's interest in south Thailand is mired in its political problems with PAS, and therefore one of imminent danger to the Malay Thais, if this equation should change.

There was once a bilateral agreement between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur to allow Malaysian forces to cross into Thailand in 'hot pursuit' operations against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) remnants; and for Thai armed forces pursuing its Muslim rebels.

But that was abrogated in 1976. In the 1990s, the CPM formally surrendered. Bangkok continues to insist that the Muslim Thai rebels can operate at will because they have sanctuary across the border. There is truth in this.

Familial ties exist between families across the border. In the 1970s, Thailand formally objected when Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen was appointed deputy defence minister, on the grounds that his Thai relatives were immured for being in the separatist movement.

Indeed, his uncle, once an Umno MP, was the eminense grise of the separatists, a son of privilege, a classmate of a future Thai prime minister. But at that time, such differences could be sorted out by a talking through by the leaders. Not now.

Powerful patrons

In the present escalation of violence in southern Thailand, which began in 2001, three different strands have come into play. The Malay Thai realised the wealth that would accrue from oil and gas, and looked not to a link-up with Malaysia, but as an independent nation able to stand on its own feet.

The Thaksin Shinnawatra government in Bangkok has scaled down its oil exploration activities in the area. Several oil exploration companies licensed to drill for oil have been ordered to reduce their activities. It wants to contain the south by deliberate threats and denial of its dues.

It paints the violence as part of the larger global war on terror, to which Kuala Lumpur is in broad agreement. But it did not wash. One viewed it as reason to impose military rule, the other as an important plank to paint the PAS government in Kelantan, and its agencies, of complicity in Islamic fundamentalist extremism.

Neither would have worked. For it does seem the Malay Thai is now courted by other powerful patrons; an influential group within that sees no future in linking with either Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. Oil and gas is incentive enough for that.

Some sources in the south suggest that the Malay Thai response was the targeted killings, the scattered but high profile robberies in 2002, the killing of policemen in 2003, and of soldiers and monks in 2004. And they have help.

It is done to an organised scheme for which Bangkok privately blames Kuala Lumpur but that seems unlikely. The fact of the matter is that Kuala Lumpur had gone into southern Thailand in recent years without a plan, and more serious hands had to be flown in to rescue them.

To not put too fine a point to it, the Malay Thai now seem organised. By whom we do not know, but the orchestrated attacks could not have been possible without it. On March 18, for instance, 40 places were set ablaze in southern Thailand, a scale never seen before. It is therefore not surprising that southern Thailand has been under martial law since January.

American help?

Southern Thailand is, in one sense, a Southeast Asia version of Kashmir, for which India and Pakistan vie for control. But the Kashmiris want independence, no less. Kuala Lumpur was initially dismissive of Thaksin's request for a bilateral meeting in the Malaysian capital with Pak Lah, to which it now agrees.

Malaysia's Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar has clearly been caught flat-footed - the Thai leader wants to discuss that Malaysia is a training base and safe haven for Malay Thai separatists, that Kuala Lumpur is involved in southern Thailand far more heavily than it admits, and more frighteningly for Malaysia, that Thailand will ask the US for help in this violent war on terror in the south.

There is another unmentioned fear in Bangkok - that the Malaysian support is part of an ill-thought out policy of pressuring Thailand to cut the Isthmus of Kra canal for its own foreign and security policy reasons - to keep both Singapore and Bangkok at bay.

Both Thailand and Malaysia have mishandled the southern Thai problem. Neither has a clear idea of what is to be done. But both are active to push their half-baked schemes to the hilt. The Malay Thai has become a nutcracker whose pincers are held by Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

The escalating and co-ordinated violence is one aspect of it. The disinterest in both capitals to the fate of the Malay Thai is another. When Thailand rejoiced at the discovery of offshore oil and gas across its border with Malaysia, it allowed for good times for the Malay Thai.

But Thaksin's government seeks to be a more nationalistic one in which the minorities are kept in their place. He makes a point of it by denying the Muslim minority in the south their due. It has caused a chain reaction, which has shocked the Malay Thai.

That can only be resolved by more dramatic measures. One comes to mind. But is the revered and aging king up to the rigours of an extended journey to his southern provinces?