Protests lead Thais to cancel summit

April 12, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Washington Post

PATTAYA, Thailand — Anti-government demonstrators derailed Asia’s most important multilateral summit Saturday, invading the conference center in this Thai resort town and forcing the cancellation of the bulk of the three-day meeting.

The Thai government used helicopters to evacuate the foreign leaders, who were in a nearby hotel, and declared a state of emergency after hundreds of red-shirted protesters broke through lines of police and military guards and smashed through doors to reach the heart of the conference center.

The authorities were forced to rely on the good will of the protesters and a thin chain padlocked around the handles of the hotel’s glass doors to protect the leaders inside before the evacuation.

The Pattaya summit was supposed to bring together the leaders of the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

The agenda was dominated by the international financial crisis, but leaders had also planned to sign an important ASEAN-China agreement on investment, and China, Japan and South Korea were due to discuss North Korea’s recent missile test.

The annual meetings are almost the only time that Asian leaders gather without leaders from the United States or Europe. The meeting had already been deferred once. It was supposed to take place in December, but another group of protesters had threatened that event.

A government spokesman said that they hoped to have the meeting two months from now, but diplomats said they thought that was unlikely.

The protesters were demanding the resignation of the four-month-old government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Abhisit came to power in a controversial parliamentary vote in December, a route his opponents say bypassed the democratic process. They accuse him of relying on powerful business and military leaders to support him.

After a few minutes of chanting slogans, the protesters dispersed when one of their leaders borrowed a police megaphone to tell them that Abhisit had left the building.