BANGKOK, Dec 18: Muslim militants in Thailand's restive south are using jungle training camps in neighbouring Malaysia, the Thai prime minister said on Saturday in remarks that brought a shocked denial from his Malaysian counterpart.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra made the claim in his weekly radio address, his first comment on links between Thailand's regional neighbours and Thai Muslim militants who have staged almost daily attacks on government targets this year.

"Many who have strange behaviour have imitated their radical friends in Indonesia," Mr Thaksin said, adding that many of the militants had been to study Islam there.

"They (radicals) have recruited prospective youths and trained them in jungles, some in Kelantan and others in Thailand," he said, referring to the northern Malaysian state along the Thai border.

But Mr Thaksin said the Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur governments had never supported the militants and were cooperating with Bangkok.

"The governments of Indonesia and Malaysia are not involved. In fact, they have been very helpful to us," he said.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi denied his country was being used as a base to train Thai guerillas.

"I am shocked over such a statement. If Thaksin has such information, he should convey this to Malaysia through diplomatic channel," Abdullah Badawi was quoted as saying on a visit to Dubai by Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama.

"We question Thaksin's motive for making the statement..." he said. "He said he knows and we don't know. So it is right to tell us," Mr Abdullah added.

"I think this is not true because Malaysia is not a base that can be used by any group who are planning to take action against any other country. That is our clear stand," he said.

HUNDREDS KILLED: Mr Thaksin said violence in the region, in which more than 500 people have been killed since January, had become more gruesome, with cases of Buddhists being decapitated, because Thai militants had also been exposed to radicalism in Indonesia.

Southern Thailand, once an independent sultanate that covered most of the three provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, has a 100-year history of resentment of rule by Bangkok and saw a low-key separatist insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s.

A third of mostly Buddhist Thailand's six million Muslims live in the far south bordering Malaysia.

Since January, there have been almost daily attacks by militants in the south. Security officials expect a major incident to mark the first anniversary of the eruption of the renewed violence.

Mr Thaksin did not say if these militants were connected to Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiah network, blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings.

Four suspected rebel leaders were arrested earlier this week and Mr Thaksin has described them as "significant ringleaders" who "played a commanding role".

He said police were still hunting for another 68 militant suspects, 31 of whom were "very interesting figures". -Reuters