NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AP) -- Thailand is setting up a new security force for its mainly Muslim southern provinces after a series of attacks that have raised fears of Islamic militancy in the region, officials said Tuesday.
National police chief Gen. Sant Sarutanond expressed confidence the new force -- called the Southern Coordination Administration -- could help contain the violence in a year.
Thailand's National Security Council decided Monday to create the force, which will be made up of civilians, military and police, said Deputy Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Phalangoon Klaharn.
Police had been handling the region's security after an earlier force was disbanded by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year because it was deemed ineffective.
Sant said the new body would unify military and police efforts.
``Our intelligence had failed in the past, but now it won't stop only at the army or the police level,'' he said. ``It will all come to a central intelligence unit.''
Stopping the violence ``might take three months, or six months or even a year, but we will try to stop it as soon as possible,'' Sant said in Narathiwat, a province about 650 miles south of Bangkok.
He spoke after distributing bulletproof jackets to 1,500 newly deployed police officers.
Sant said the police had changed their tactics and would serve mainly as ``public relations'' officers with the Muslim community by patrolling villages in small units.
Earlier Tuesday, national security chief Kachadpai Buruphat said the Interior Ministry would oversee the new force at the policy level while a military commander will direct operations from a base in the south.
Muslims are a majority in the south of Thailand, but make up just 4 percent of the country's 62 million people, who are predominantly Buddhists.
Bangkok wants to end the spate of violence that has plagued the south in recent months. Since December, 13 policemen and three civilians have been killed in attacks.
Last week, a small bomb exploded in a train at Yala station in southern Thailand, injuring two security guards. Police said they suspect an Islamic group was involved in the bombing -- suggesting for the first time a link between Muslim activists and a rash of violence in the area.
Sant added that U.S. intelligence officials had assured him that there were no members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network in Thailand.
Officials differ on who is to blame for the slayings.
Despite saying last week that he suspected Islamic separatists were behind recent violence, Sant said Tuesday that ``the violence has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with separatist factions.''
He said people with interests in extortion rackets related to road construction, electricity and other infrastructure projects were to blame.
Some officials have expressed fears of a separatist group emerging in the south.
Narathiwat was the stronghold of a Muslim separatist group, the Pattani United Liberation Organization, which disbanded in 1984 after being offered general amnesty by the government.
Muslim rebels have for decades engaged in banditry and extortion, although they have also been linked to several terrorist bombings.