Article 113

Sirichai vows to hunt down bike gunmen

Sets out priorities for ending the violence

WASSANA NANUAM

Pattani _ Deputy Supreme Commander Sirichai Tunyasiri, the new chief of southern anti-insurgency forces, has made his top priority hunting down the motorcycle gunmen responsible for daily killings in the deep South.

Gen Sirichai said his main task was to heighten the safety situation for both people and property and vowed to put an end to the daily killings perpetrated by attackers riding motorcycles.

He outlined the plan during his first visit to the South since being given the post of new director of the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command with overall power of all agencies in charge of suppressing separatist insurgents.

The command operates out of the Sirindhorn army camp in Yarang district of Pattani.

He said lessening the number of daily killings would be his first step and added the task was urgent, requiring measures to be implemented immediately. He did not elaborate.

Gen Sirichai said he would call on his deputies, the police, the military and local leaders to join an advisory panel where they would contribute ideas to restore permanent peace to the South.

The panel would be made up of specialists from a wide range of fields, including well-known forensic pathologist Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunant, who is also deputy director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science.

Input from the panel would reshape operational strategies under a wider power-restructuring plan.

``The approach I have in mind is for everyone to put their thinking caps on,'' he said.

Gen Sirichai said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had stressed unity and coordination between security agencies and had given him a free hand to give orders on security matters in the region as he saw fit.

The government had been on the right track in resolving southern unrest but personnel on the operation level were not working in concert, he said.

His four deputies would be assigned different facets of the problem to deal with. They would capitalise on their expertise and he would step in if there was any conflict among them.

He said improving community relations would do much to ease separatist ideology in a tactic to be deployed alongside military suppression.

But he said that force would ``take a back seat''. Gen Sirichai said to go on a military offensive would not be the right approach. To win community support, the people would also have to become engaged in the fight against insurgents.

Gen Sirichai held his first informal meeting at the Sirindhorn headquarters yesterday with senior army officers who will be stationed in the South.

He earlier said he would remain in the South, for a year if he felt it necessary, until the violence subsided.

The command headquarters would be manned by more than 100 officers and function as the operational nerve centre.

Gen Sirichai has ordered Supreme Command development units to help build offices and lodgings for the staff.