Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has agreed to a peace plan put forward by a high-level panel to end an insurgency in Muslim-majority provinces, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The centerpiece of the plan announced on Monday by the independent National Reconciliation Commission is to create a new regional body to mediate the conflict that has claimed 1,300 lives in the last two years.

Government spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee said the premier had tasked his top deputy, Chidchai Vanasathidya, with implementing the plan.

"He assigned Chidchai to properly implement the proposals made by the commission, immediately if possible," he told reporters.

"But the prime minister asked Chidchai to report to him on which proposals would require passing new laws, because for those the government has to wait for a new parliament," he said.

General elections in April failed to produce a parliament and new court-supervised polls are set for October.

The National Reconciliation Commission, created in March 2005, called for a new administrative body to oversee the restive provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, as a way to mediate conflicts and give residents greater voice in local government decisions.

The proposed body is similar to one that Thaksin dismantled shortly after taking office in 2001. The previous body had been credited with reducing violence in the region after an upsurge of fighting in the 1970s.

Thaksin had disbanded the body believing that the threat of violence had passed.

The leader of the opposition Democrat Party, which enjoys broad support in the south, said he supported the plan.

"We are in favor of increased local participation (in government) to win back the trust of the people. Winning back the trust is the key," Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters.

The commission also called for the creation of an unarmed peacekeeping force comprising police and military; improved schools; and the establishment of a special fund to promote reconciliation.

The report said the government should adopt the Malay dialect of Yawi as a "working language" in the region, where many residents do not speak Thai.

It also emphasized the need to improve the justice system in the south Thailand, where few people have been prosecuted over the violence.

Also Tuesday, a Buddhist and a Muslim were killed by suspected Islamic militants in the south, police said.

Amnart Chuliwan, a 40-year-old Buddhist government informant and owner of a second-hand jeans shop, was gunned down at his store in Yala, one of the three Muslim-majority restive provinces on the border with Malaysia.

"We suspected it was the work of militants because they knew he was a government informant," Yala police captain Job Koewsrijan said.

In neighboring Pattani province, Nirandorn Sama, a 46-year-old Muslim village chief, was shot dead on Monday by suspected militants in a drive-by shooting.

(China Daily June 7, 2006)