By THOMAS FULLER
The New York Times
PATTAYA, Thailand – Several hundred anti-government protesters pushed through barricades manned by riot police and army soldiers on Friday as they tried to disrupt an East Asian summit meeting here.
It was not immediately clear whether the protesters would succeed in shutting down the 16-nation gathering in Pattaya, a beach town 100 miles southeast of Bangkok. But red-shirted demonstrators swarmed nearly unchecked onto a putting green in front of the conference center where the three-day meeting began Friday morning.
The protesters -- chanting “Abhisit, get out!” -- were allies of the tens of thousands of other “red shirts” who have gathered Bangkok to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
Early in the afternoon, in a most unusual move, the deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, emerged from the meeting and approached the swarm of angry protesters.
"We've been waiting for you,'' a protest leader shouted through a megaphone from the back of a pickup truck. "If you resign, the red shirts will stop protesting.''
The police then steered Mr. Suthep back inside.
The participants in the annual summit meting are the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Faced with protests in Bangkok that drew as many as 100,000 demonstrators this week, Mr. Abhisit declared Friday a public holiday in Thailand, linking a long weekend with another holiday from Monday to Wednesday of next week.
The government was clearly hoping the long break might defuse tensions in Bangkok by encouraging out-of-town protesters – many of them farmers from northern Thailand -- to head home. Taxi drivers had joined the protests Thursday afternoon and snarled traffic at several key intersections in the capital.
The current wave of unrest, while so far peaceful, was reminiscent of huge demonstrations in Bangkok last autumn -- protests that led to Mr. Abhisit himself coming to power.
Those demonstrations occasionally flared into violence and forced the organizers of the East Asian summit meeting to move it from the capital to the northern city of Chiang Mai. The date of the summit also was changed, from December 2008 to March 2009. The meeting was then rescheduled again, for Easter weekend in the resort city of Phuket, before it was finally relocated to Pattaya.
Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
It was not immediately clear whether the protesters would succeed in shutting down the 16-nation gathering in Pattaya, a beach town 100 miles southeast of Bangkok. But red-shirted demonstrators swarmed nearly unchecked onto a putting green in front of the conference center where the three-day meeting began Friday morning.
The protesters -- chanting “Abhisit, get out!” -- were allies of the tens of thousands of other “red shirts” who have gathered Bangkok to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
Early in the afternoon, in a most unusual move, the deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, emerged from the meeting and approached the swarm of angry protesters.
"We've been waiting for you,'' a protest leader shouted through a megaphone from the back of a pickup truck. "If you resign, the red shirts will stop protesting.''
The police then steered Mr. Suthep back inside.
The participants in the annual summit meting are the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Faced with protests in Bangkok that drew as many as 100,000 demonstrators this week, Mr. Abhisit declared Friday a public holiday in Thailand, linking a long weekend with another holiday from Monday to Wednesday of next week.
The government was clearly hoping the long break might defuse tensions in Bangkok by encouraging out-of-town protesters – many of them farmers from northern Thailand -- to head home. Taxi drivers had joined the protests Thursday afternoon and snarled traffic at several key intersections in the capital.
The current wave of unrest, while so far peaceful, was reminiscent of huge demonstrations in Bangkok last autumn -- protests that led to Mr. Abhisit himself coming to power.
Those demonstrations occasionally flared into violence and forced the organizers of the East Asian summit meeting to move it from the capital to the northern city of Chiang Mai. The date of the summit also was changed, from December 2008 to March 2009. The meeting was then rescheduled again, for Easter weekend in the resort city of Phuket, before it was finally relocated to Pattaya.
Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
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