Thai protesters tighten grip on Bangkok airport

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BANGKOK, Nov 26 (agencies): Anti-government protesters tightened their grip over Bangkok's international airport Wednesday, causing chaos in the terminal and triggering speculation of imminent intervention by the military.
The head of Thailand's powerful army has asked the government to dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Gen Anupong Paochinda denied the move amounted to a coup, and also called on anti-government protesters to withdraw from Bangkok's international airport. However, Gen Anupong said the government was still in control. "This is not a coup," he told a news conference.
"The government still has full authority. These points are the way to solve the problem which has plunged the country into a deep crisis," Gen Anupong said.
After masked PAD members broke into the control tower at Bangkok's $4 billion Suvarnabhumi airport, the latest twist in their seizure of the site, a rival pro-government group urged its people to hit the streets, raising the prospect of clashes.
"What they have done are terrorist acts," Jatuporn Prompan, a ruling party politician and leader of the anti-PAD Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship, told a news conference.
A series of small bomb blasts wounded several PAD protesters in the airport vicinity Wednesday, demonstration leaders said, as chaos ruled inside the terminal, with all flights canceled.
The stock market bucked the positive trend in the region, falling two percent to a five-year low as investors feared the airport siege would deepen the economic impact of a three-year political crisis that has paralyzed government.
The baht currency was trading at 35.29 to the dollar, after hitting a 21-month low of 35.36 earlier in the day.
Thailand's finance minister has said the protests could have a damaging effect on the economy, which depends on tourism as a key sector and is already vulnerable to global financial turmoil.
The government forecast this week that the economy would grow just 4.5 percent this year, its slowest rate in seven years.
Somchai, whom the PAD accuse of being a puppet of Thaksin, his brother-in-law, is due to return from an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru Wednesday afternoon.
His flight has been rerouted, but his handlers are not revealing his destination.
"I will get off the plane wherever it lands," the Bangkok Post quoted him as saying from Peru.
Thousands of passengers slept overnight on benches and luggage carousels at Suvarnabhumi, many annoyed that airport staff fled when the PAD demonstrators, dressed in the movement's yellow shirts, invaded the terminal.