ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

By AMBIKA AHUJA and DENIS D. GRAY / AP WRITERS | BANGKOK — Thailand's new, youthful prime minister said on Wednesday that U.S. President Barack Obama's economic package, buttressed by a "politics of hope," may help Asia's battered economies.

Noting that the current global crisis started in the United States, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva expressed optimism that the new U.S. president would bolster the region's slumping economies.

"The new president has handled this transition in a way that has strong approval. That will help. And I am sure that the economic package in the U.S. will also help the economy (in Asia), including Thailand," he said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

Abhisit, who came to power in December, has been called "Thailand's Obama" by some commentators hopeful that he can unify a country polarized by years of political turmoil and address its current economic woes.

But the 44-year-old Abhisit, educated at Eton and Oxford, must also wrestle with an insurgency in Thailand's southern provinces, opposition from followers of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and a shaky coalition government.

"The comparison [with Obama] would be very flattering for me," he said. "But I also share a number of his views and ideals and approaches. I believe in participation of people. I believe in the politics of hope. I believe that you should use your youthful energy to get to work to solving the country's problems."

Abhisit said that new, less military-focused strategies would be taken to end the separatist Muslim insurgency, which since 2004 has taken the lives of more than 3,300 people. The majority of Thais are Buddhists, but Muslims dominate the country's three, southernmost provinces.

"It makes no sense to be running the provinces under continuous application of the emergency decree. At the moment, we actually have martial law there. We also have the new security law," he said. "We should be aiming at lifting these special laws."

"We obviously cannot solve this problem in a month or in a year. But we want to see the problem substantially reduced, and we are making clear progress, setting clear directions," he said.

Abhisit said he has asked authorities to investigate recent allegations by Amnesty International and others of widespread use of torture by the military in the south as well as alleged abuse by Thai authorities of illegal migrants from Bangladesh. He pledged that any officials found guilty would be punished in both cases.

A Bangkok-based advocacy group last week alleged that Thai security officials have forced as many as 1,000 migrants—mostly stateless Rohingyas from Bangladesh—back out to sea in rickety boats since early December. It accused the Thai navy of forcing several hundred of the migrants onto a barge in the middle of the ocean, where as many as 300 later drowned.

Abhisit said that the U.N. High Commissioner Refugees would be allowed to have a role in the migrant influx but did not specify whether the agency will be granted access to those still under Thai custody.

"Certainly, we cannot allow illegal immigrants to threaten our security and certainly we will respect the principles of human rights, and we will try to find that balance," he said.

Parliament voted Abhisit into office in December after a court dissolved three major parties for electoral fraud, including the pro-Thaksin party that won the 2007 elections. It capped six months of violent anti-government protests that included a weeklong takeover of Bangkok's two airports.

While deep divisions in Thai society remain, street protests have recently dwindled. Only a handful of pro-Thaksin supporters on Wednesday shouted obscenities outside the Parliament building where the interview took place.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say it [the crisis] is over," Abhisit said. "I would say that we now have an opportunity to get things back to normal, and I think there has been tremendous progress in the last two to three weeks."