Word: thailander
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...could have been a politician on a campaign swing. When U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz stepped from a helicopter at a refugee camp in Thailand six miles from the Kampuchean border last week, he was greeted by some 55,000 cheering Kampucheans waving American flags and carrying signs that read, GOD BLESS AMERICA and PLEASE RESCUE CAMBODIA. The normally impassive Secretary called the visit "a stirring experience." But Shultz, who stopped at the camp during a 13-day trip through Asia, remained wary of a U.S. commitment to Kampucheans fighting 160,000 Vietnamese troops occupying their country. Although...
...widely applauded shift in position?including a reduction of troop numbers in the troubled region?has apparently done little to assuage the militants. In propaganda leaflets dropped in the South, they warned that the government cannot be trusted and that locals should not cooperate with the authorities. Now, Thailand is faced with the possibility that the insurgents are expanding their terror campaign into new parts of the country. "These militants are very provocative and getting more indiscriminate," says Sunai Phasuk, a political scientist at Bangkok's Thammasat University. "Their idea appears to be to try and trap Thaksin...
...streets with loudspeakers. But Dharmmasaroj still sees room for improvement. He had trouble getting through to some of the largest TV networks. "It took them longer to get the message out," he says. "If a tsunami had hit, then many people still would have lost their lives." Thailand will have a more sophisticated system in place by the end of the month, Dharmmasaroj says. Warning towers are now being installed in areas hit by December's tsunami; they will use sirens and loudspeakers to sound an alarm. "We'll have a telecommunication system that will allow us to send...
...however, the region must make do with makeshift solutions. To be effective in the long run, the countries rimming the Indian Ocean need a system that can determine not only when a tsunami might occur, but also when it won't, so that warnings can be issued judiciously. In Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, hundreds of thousands of people spent hours waiting for a tsunami that never came. In Nias, the fear of a tsunami probably cost many lives of people who were trapped in rubble because their relatives had headed for high ground. The local government was paralyzed from...
...prove difficult. The system will be expensive to establish and maintain, and pledges from donor countries in the tsunami's aftermath have not materialized. India has balked at the idea of an open exchange of data, fearing that nuclear secrets could be revealed. Meanwhile, competition between Indonesia and Thailand to host the warning center has led to an impasse. "We can't wait for these countries to make up their minds," says Thailand's Dharmmasaroj, "so we are setting up our own national warning center." If a system does get off the ground by the end of next year...