BANGKOK: The insurgency in Thailand's Muslim south will go on despite the post-coup government replacing the iron fist of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra with an olive branch, analysts said.

But the U-turn, featuring a humble apology for past brutality, the promise of a place for Islamic Sharia law in the Malay-speaking region and the revival of a once-trusted administrative body could undermine support for the violence, they said.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's visit to the south to deliver the apology for Thaksin's hardline approach to an insurgency, in which more than 1,800 people have been killed in less than three years, had reverberated, they said.

“The government's demonstration of its sincerity to resolve the problem has won many hearts and minds,” said security analyst Panitan Wattanayagorn, of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, which had slammed Thaksin for his brute-force policies, commended the apology and offered help to bring peace to the violence-racked far south, an Islamic sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago.

However, the insurgents, whose organisation remains largely a mystery and who never claim responsibility for attacks or state their aims out loud, reacted with an intensified wave of violence.

The attacks included bombs that went off almost simultaneously at eight car and motorcycle showrooms in the city of Yala a day after Surayud visited.

“The insurgents are saying through the attacks that they don't want a ceasefire and they don't want their supporters to turn to the government,” Panitan said.

Surayud has acknowledged that it will take time to see any results from his peace offensive in a region where 80 per cent of its people speak a Malay dialect and many are resentful of abusive or culturally ignorant Buddhist officials.

Violence would not disappear immediately like “switching off” an electric light, but his apology had paved the way for the government and Muslims to tackle the problem together, Surayud said.—Reuters