Malaysian prime minister visits Thailand to discuss conflict

Bangkok - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak arrived in Thailand Monday on an official three-day visit that will take him to Thailand's troubled deep South on the two countries' common border. It was Razak's first trip abroad since he became prime minister, the Bangkok Post reported.

On Tuesday, Razak and Thai Prime Minister Abhsiit Vejjajiva are due to co-chair bilateral consultations in Bangkok on various areas of cooperation.

Both leaders are to travel to Narathiwat province on Wednesday to attend a ceremony to rename a bridge across the Golok river as the "Friendship Bridge."

The two premiers are expected to discuss ways of ending a long festering conflict in Thailand's three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - which has claimed more than 3,500 lives over the past six years.

About 80 per cent of the region's 2 million people are Muslims, with closer cultural, linguistic and historical ties to neighboring Malaysia than to predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.