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Empresas y finanzas

Thai deaths rise to 23, red shirts vow final battle


    BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's "red shirt" protesters on Wednesday ruled out talks with the government and said they would concentrate on one site in the capital Bangkok in readiness for a final battle to oust the country's prime minister.

    The decision by the protesters to rally on just one site in the capital's affluent Rachaprasong shopping district came after the death toll from Saturday's bloody clashes rose by two -- a soldier and a protester -- to 23.

    "We will use the Rachaprasong areas as the final battleground to oust the government. There will be no more negotiations, no more talks," protest leader Nattawut Saikua told reporters on Wednesday.

    The red shirts earlier called off a planned march on an army base that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has been using as a temporary office. Protesters want him to quit immediately for new elections and leave the country.

    Bangkok was peaceful on the second day of the country's new year's Songkran festival after tens of thousands of revellers took to the streets on Tuesday night, dousing each other with water and flour.

    Abhisit, who most political analysts had predicted would ride out the storm, has seen his position undermined by an investigation into corrupt funding of his party and by comments from the country's army chief that new elections were the only way out of the crisis that has gripped Thailand for four years.

    The government has said it will hunt down the "terrorists" it says were responsible for Saturday's deaths in clashes, in which more than 800 people were injured in the worst political violence Thailand has seen since 1992.

    Didier Duret, CIO of ABN Amro Private Bank, said he was "underweight" Thailand. "We don't like the political risk," he said.

    Standard & Poor's retained Thailand's BBB-plus foreign currency rating on Tuesday but also kept the outlook at negative, highlighting the risks. S&P also maintained the local currency rating at A-minus.

    "Since 2006, the country has seen a number of abrupt changes of government. This has distracted from long-term policy planning and implementation," Kim Eng Tan, sovereign analyst for Thailand, said in a statement. But he said the risk of widespread violence was low.

    (Reporting Nopporn Wong-Annan; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Bill Tarrant)