Thailand, March 28: Live televised talks between Thailand’s embattled Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and anti-government protesters have failed to end two weeks of street demonstrations.
The Prime Minister refused to bow to the red-shirted demonstrators’ demand to call snap elections, but both sides agreed to meet today at 6pm (2200 AEDT) to continue discussions.
“House dissolution can only happen if we see it is not only the way out for the Reds but for the whole country also,” Mr Abhisit told three Red Shirt leaders across a meeting table yesterday as he sat flanked by two of his senior staff.
The Reds’ Jatuporn Prompan, one of the leaders of the movement that backs deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said they will return to the table today, but pressed the Prime Minister to meet their request within a fortnight.
“We ask you to dissolve the house within two weeks. Whatever your decision should be, if we talk tomorrow, I want you to consider this condition,” Mr Jatuporn said.
The Reds have staged a series of mass dramatic stunts over the past two weeks in their bid to force Mr Abhisit to call snap elections, picketing the army barracks where he is holed up and throwing their own blood at his office gates.
Mr Abhisit had ruled out talks earlier, but made an about-face and looked visibly uneasy throughout much of the three-hour meeting with the Red Shirt leaders, held at a Bangkok educational institute.
The Red Shirts are opposed to Abhisit’s Democrat-led government, accusing it of being undemocratic as it came to power on the back of a parliamentary vote that followed a controversial court ruling ousting Mr Thaksin’s allies from power.
They seek the return of the twice-elected populist Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon, saying the coup that ousted him in 2006 was illegal.
“If you are confident of winning an election, you should return power to the people,” Mr Jatuporn told Mr Abhisit.
Polls are due to be held by December 2011.
Tens of thousands of protesters sat at their rally ground in Bangkok’s government quarter yesterday to watch the televised talks on a giant screen, waving their signature plastic clappers as their leaders spoke.
The Reds upped the pressure on Abhisit at the weekend, threatening to march in their tens of thousands on the military barracks where he has been holed up.
Their movement is drawn largely from the country’s rural poor who say the British-born Oxford-educated Mr Abhisit is only able to lead the Government’s fragile six-party coalition with the powerful military’s backing.
Mr Thaksin, who is staying in Dubai to avoid a jail sentence for corruption, addresses his supporters regularly by videolink and last week urged them to increase pressure on the Government.
—Agencies