Bangkok: Thailand?s Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon on Monday has said that foreign rebel in his country were not linked to al-Qaeda.
In an interview, Kantathi Suphamongkhon rejected an appeal for self-rule made by the separatist Islamic militant group the Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) last week.
Asked if any foreign extremists from Indonesia, Malaysia or elsewhere with links to al-Qaeda network were involved in the unrest, the minister said: "We have no indication so far."
"Of course, people know one another sometimes. But there is no indication of any foreign terrorism involvement in the situation," he said, adding the trouble in the south was an internal problem in Thailand.
"There have been attempts by certain people to use violence and then try to bring religion down as justification. But what is clear is that it's not a problem of religion. It's a problem of certain groups of people using violence and then getting people confused by bringing religion."
Violence in the three Muslim-majority southern provinces of mainly Buddhist Thailand has killed more than 1,000 people since January 2004 and has proved to be one of the toughest challenges for Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
"We're not a federal system. Autonomy in that sense is not part of our system. It's a unified system that we have. We don't have the concept of autonomy within our constitution," he said.
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