|
BANGKOK: Thailand’s defense minister said that
toppled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra should only return home
after elections, in order to prevent any eruption of “chaos” in
the kingdom.
“The Council for National
Security will today discuss Thaksin’s return, and they will take
his latest movements overseas into consideration,” General
Boonrawd Somtas said, referring to the ruling junta.
“Personally I think Thaksin
should return to Thailand after elections, to prevent him from
creating internal chaos,” he told reporters.
Boonrawd said the junta’s
credibility had not been affected by Thaksin’s recent media
interviews, in which he criticized the new government’s economic
policies and said Thais would not tolerate a dictatorship for long.
The general added that the Thai
public and foreign governments should treat with skepticism
Thaksin’s comments that he did not want to return to politics.
“His words and his actual
actions are different,” Boonrawd said.
The junta, which toppled Thaksin
in a bloodless coup in September, has promised elections and a
return to democracy by the end of this year.
The billionaire
businessman-turned-politician was in New York when tanks rolled onto
the streets of Bangkok, has since remained in exile, hopping between
Europe and Asia, with stays in Britain, China, Hong Kong and
Singapore.
His globetrotting has made
Thailand’s rulers nervous, and they lashed out at Singapore last
week after the city-state allowed Thaksin to meet a deputy prime
minister there. Thaksin is currently in Japan.
The junta and the government have
given mixed signals on Thaksin’s homecoming, with Prime Minister
Surayud Chulanont on Monday saying he could return as long as he
eschewed politics.
--AFP
|
