M'sia, Thailand to adopt plan for troubled Thai Muslim south

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Malaysia and Thailand will this week endorse a programme to develop Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces, wracked by unrest that has killed around 250 people this year, according to media reports.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar and his Thai counterpart Surakiart Sathirathai will discuss the programme in Bangkok on Thursday, the reports said.

Largely Buddhist Thailand called in Muslim Malaysia, which borders the troubled Thai provinces, to help draw up a development blueprint for its Muslim areas in a bid to try to stem simmering unrest that ignited in January.

The blueprint includes plans for Malaysian vocational training of youths in southern Thailand and building trust between the government and locals in order to fight militancy, Syed Hamid said.

It also covers the development of Islamic banking and tourism in the southern provinces with cooperation between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, the minister said.

The plan underlines efforts by both countries to improve infrastructure, such as transport links between northern Malaysia and southern Thailand, and the creation of opportunities for cultural exchanges.

And it outlines ways the nations can cooperate in relief work in the case of natural disasters, while listing measures to promote cooperation in agriculture, such as in fishing and irrigation.

No preachers

However the plan, drawn up by officials of both countries, does not address Thailand's request for Malaysian Islamic preachers to work in southern Thailand, Syed Hamid said.

Malaysia's government - which fears that the violence could spill over the border - offered at a meeting in Bangkok in May to send Malaysian Islamic preachers to Thailand to teach that Islam is a religion of peace.

Syed Hamid said Malaysia still needed to into the details of the arrangement.

A Muslim insurgency raged in southern Thailand until the 1980s, but the movement fragmented and attacks dropped off until January, when a raid on an army weapons depot left four soldiers dead and sparked the latest wave of violence.



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