Abhisit: Thailand may make se of siezed weapons

Thailand may make use of certain types of weapons seized from a Georgian-registered cargo plane instead of destroying them as required by a UN protocol, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday

He said technical explanations regarding the matter would be given by officials responsible for the protocol process.

Asked by reporters to clarify his remarks on further on use of the weapons, he simply said: "If we don't need to demolish them, we can make use of them."

Asked if seizing the weapons would put the Kingdom at risk of terrorist attack, he said: "Thailand does not get itself involved at the centre of any conflict. We're just following a UN protocol, and all countries involved [in this operation] have a good understanding of it."

Asked what Thailand would gain from this action, the prime minister said: "Everyone benefits from us following a UN protocol. If we had failed to act, and these weapons were later found to have travelled through Thailand, we'd pay a price for that. What is needed is for us to prove to the world that we are a good member [of the UN] without getting ourselves into the centre of any conflict whatsoever."

Abhisit said it was not yet clear who the intended buyers of the weapons were and cited a Crime Suppression Division (CSD) report that English-language instructions found on the boxes meant the weapons could not have been sent from North Korea.

Asked if he could confirm weapons had not originated from North Korea, Abhisit said: "No one has confirmed that."

He also said he saw no links between arms dealer Viktor Bout and the seized arms despite, in his words, "efforts to link them together".

He also said: "To my understanding, demolition of the weapons may not happen, or maybe it will for a small number of weapons, because they are not the types that are required to be demolished."

Air Force commander Air Chief Marshall Itthiphorn Supphawong said the UN protocol would dictate what to do with the weapons and that Thailand would receive no reward or bounty for the seizure.

Meanwhile, a source with the CSD, which helped inspect the weapons cache, acknowledged reports that a box containing rocket tubes was possibly missing from the original number of 145 reported in media.

However, the source said there was no solid evidence of any box disappearing and that even if one were missing, there was no reason to believe it contained rocket tubes specifically.

"There is one metal box with one serial number missing," the source said.

The source declined to speculate on whether the alleged disappearance was merely a counting mistake or if there really was a box missing based on the original count