King gets judges to sort out crisis

BANGKOK - Thailand's top judges are to meet tomorrow to find a solution to the country's political crisis in response to a rare intervention by revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The ruling Thai Rak Thai party and the three main Opposition parties were separately holding talks.

The King summoned senior judges to tell them he could not produce a solution to the crisis. The Opposition's election boycott on April 2 had produced a undemocratic one-party Parliament.

The boycott has made it unlikely Parliament will be able to meet to begin the process of forming a new Government.

It was the King's first direct political intervention since 1992 when he stepped in to end a bloody confrontation between a military Government and a "people power" street protest.

The chief justice will meet the head of the Supreme Administrative Court, which rules on the legality of government actions, and the Constitutional Court, which interprets the 1997 charter. The Constitutional Court, in the only precedent similar to the present predicament, ruled in 2000 that the 200-member Senate could not convene until all its seats were filled.

- REUTERS