Travel Advisory / Protest To Australian Charge D'a

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The Australian charge d'affaires was called in yesterday for a ''soft protest'' against Canberra's travel advisory to its citizens about possible attacks on Christmas Eve in Bangkok and other tourist areas.

The Foreign Ministry's deputy permanent secretary Pisan Manawapat met with charge d'affaires John Griffin to discuss Australia's travel advice issued on Thursday for its citizens to exercise extreme caution on Christmas Eve.

The government website said: ''We continue to receive reports that terrorist elements in Southeast Asia are planning attacks against a range of targets, including places frequented by foreigners. Australians are advised to defer non-essential travel to the provinces of Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla, including overland travel to and from the Malaysian border through these provinces. The frequency and intensity of violent incidents in Thailand's southern provinces has been on the increase since early 2004.

''While so far this violence has been limited to southern Thailand, the escalation of violence in the South may result in attacks elsewhere in Thailand, including Bangkok and other tourist areas,'' the warning stated.

The Thai government was angered with the statement's last paragraph which mentioned Bangkok as a target, sources said.

Mr Griffin said in a telephone interview with the Bangkok Post that he could not comment on embassy business with the Thai government but he said he did meet with Mr Pisan yesterday.

A ministry official said it was a regular consultation between the ministry and the embassy, and had nothing at all to do with the security alert for Australian citizens in Thailand.

Mr Griffin reportedly told the senior official that the government's adviser Gen Kitti Rattanajaya had provided his assessment of the risk of attacks in the foreign and Thai media so the Australian government needed to advise its own citizens.

However, the danger level was different from that for Indonesia since Canberra had ''received credible new information suggesting terrorists are ready to carry out an attack shortly there, possibly targeting the Hilton Hotel''.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/25Dec2004_news10.php