BANGKOK, 27 November 2004 — An outlawed Thai separatist group has offered bounty payments of over $2,000 for the killing of governors or senior government officials in the country’s troubled south, according to its website yesterday.

The Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) offered the highest sums — 90,000 baht ($2,250) — for governors in three southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani which are at the heart of an insurgency that has left more than 550 people dead this year.

It also offers cash for other governors, their deputies, senior police and district officials in the region. The pictures of five governors were posted on the website.

The bounty was offered for two months from Nov. 22, a day before a deputy governor of Pattani — with a price of 35,000 baht on his head — was shot and injured while inspecting the scene of another shooting.

The government said it was an accident caused by a member of his security detail but has not identified the gunman.

It plans its own series of “most wanted” posters offering rewards of up to five million baht for the capture, dead or alive, of 30 suspected separatists and their leaders. Posters were to be distributed soon around Thailand’s south.

Tensions have risen sharply in the region since the deaths of 87 Muslim protesters on Oct. 25 at Tak Bai in Narathiwat province near the border with Malaysia. Most of them died through suffocation after being piled on the backs of army trucks.

After the tragedy PULO vowed revenge on its website and said Thai cities would “burn”. It warned visitors to avoid key tourist destinations.The Thai premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, yesterday dismissed the threat from PULO. “It’s ordinary. They are barking all day long,” he said.

PULO has made other threats of violence during the insurgency that sparked back into life in January including warnings of attacks on vital tourist resorts but there have been none despite the continuing violence in the south.

PULO emerged as the largest of a number of Muslim separatist organizations which formed in the 1960s to re-launch a bid for independence after Thailand annexed a former independent Islamic state in the south 102 years ago.

Meanwhile, Malaysia said yesterday Thailand should not try to stop its ASEAN partners from discussing the Muslim unrest gripping its southern provinces as the region needed to be informed of potential security threats.

Thaksin said Thursday he would walk out of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Laos next week if leaders raised the deaths of 87 Muslim protester in the south.

ASEAN’s policy of not interfering in the affairs of its 10 members “should not let it happen”, he said. But the foreign minister of Malaysia, Syed Hamid Albar, said there was “no such thing as absolute non-interference”.