BANGKOK-
Thai riot police reclaimed a main Bangkok thoroughfare on Friday that has been occupied for months by demonstrators seeking to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and said they would move to seize other protest sites in coming days.
There were no reports of clashes in a “softly softly” operation that appeared designed to test the strength of the dwindling bands of anti-government protesters who have been disrupting life in the Thai capital since November.
Police pulled back from confrontation with protesters after a stand-off at another site in the north of the capital, and made no move against the largest sites at intersections in the city’s main shopping and business districts.
“Our strategy is to do this slowly, and work inwards from areas outside of central Bangkok towards the main protest sites,” said national police chief Adul Saengsingkaew.
“We are not dispersing the protesters or using force, we are using negotiations as our main tactic.”
Protesters want to oust Yingluck, viewing her as a proxy for her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a self-exiled former prime minister who clashed with the establishment before he was overthrown by the army in 2006.
The conflict has broadly pitted the Bangkok-based middle class and royalist establishment against the mostly poorer, rural supporters of the Shinawatras in the north and northeast.
