Thai deputy PM quits over clashes

Mr Chavalit said he would take responsibility for the police intervention

A senior government minister in Thailand has resigned after violent clashes between police and protesters.

Deputy PM Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said he was stepping down to take responsibility for the clashes, which injured at least 65 people.

The unrest came just hours before new Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat delivered his inaugural speech.

Police fired teargas to disperse anti-government protesters trying to block the road leading to parliament.

The protesters say Mr Somchai and his recently ousted predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, are just proxies for former PM Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mr Thaksin, Mr Somchai's brother-in-law, was forced from office in a military coup in 2006.

The protesters have been occupying the grounds of government buildings for six weeks, but the demonstration had so far been largely peaceful.

They are members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a group that wants to replace the one-man, one-vote system with a system in which some of the representatives are chosen by professions and social groups rather than the general electorate.

'Necessary' police action

After a month of relative calm, the conflict which has paralysed Thailand's government has flared up again.

Police said the tear gas was "absolutely necessary"

Several thousand PAD protesters broke out of the compound where they had been staying and marched to the parliament building late on Monday.

They tried to seal off the building by putting up barriers of old tyres and barbed wire.

Maj Gen Anan Srihiran told Reuters: "It was absolutely necessary for police to use tear gas to break up the crowd."

Petpong Kumtonkitjakarn, from the Erawan Medical Centre, told the Associated Press that two protesters were seriously hurt.

"One of them lost his leg, another was hit with shrapnel in the chest," he said.

The protesters have now regrouped; they've locked some lawmakers inside the building and cut off their power supply.

The spark that re-ignited the protests was the arrest of two of the PAD's leaders over the weekend - arrests that appear to have been brought on deliberately, as both men already had warrants served on them and yet they chose to leave the safety of the compound.

The new government says it wants to start negotiations with the PAD, but it is also pushing ahead with controversial plans to amend the constitution, a key grievance of the protesters who see it as part of a plan to rehabilitate Mr Thaksin.

Mr Somchai made his debut speech to parliament on Tuesday

The alliance says the government must resign because of its links to Mr Thaksin, who lives in the UK and has requested political asylum there.

It accuses him of corruption and abuse of power while he was in office, and has also suggested that Mr Thaksin and his allies have a hidden republican agenda, a serious charge at a time when the country is beset by anxiety over the future of the monarchy.

The alliance turned its attention on Mr Somchai after he replaced Samak Sundaravej, who was dismissed in September after a court found him guilty of a conflict of interest charge for hosting a cookery programme.