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It is inevitable that Islamic Jihad will be outlawed worldwide, and if need be, the entire religion itself.

What other possible solutions are there for the discontinuation of violence?

Poor Muslims seem to have a lot of problems getting along with their neighbors around the globe.

When you have a problem with everyone, you're the problem.

Arms cache for Thai Muslim rebels seized

Police nab four men who say they were paid to transport the AK-47 rifles to Pattani, a Muslim-majority province

BANGKOK - Police in central Thailand arrested four people and seized arms that were apparently being sent to the troubled Muslim-majority south, officials said yesterday.

The arrests took place in Nakhon Ratchasima town on Thursday, hours before a series of attacks by unidentified gunmen in the southern province of Pattani left six people dead and three injured.

Three of the men arrested in Nakhon Ratchasima are Thai Muslims, said police Lt-Col Prasong Ruangdej. The fourth is a Buddhist.

Thailand has a Buddhist majority, although Muslims predominate in the far south.

Lt-Col Prasong said police, acting on a tip-off, intercepted a truck in which the four men were transporting 15 AK-47 rifles.

Interrogation led the police to a house in the neighbouring province of Sakeaw on the Cambodian border.

There, police found 10 more AK-47 rifles, 15,000 bullets, M-79 grenade launchers and grenades, Lt-Col Prasong said.

He said the four were expected to be charged with illegal possession of war weapons, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

'The suspects said they were paid to transport the weapons from Cambodia to Pattani and refused to say anything more,' he added.

Nakhon Ratchasima is 210km north-east of Bangkok.

Pattani is 1,100km south of the capital.

Lt-Col Prasong said the seized weapons might be linked to the spate of violence in the country's four Muslim-majority provinces, including Pattani, which has left more than 36 people dead since December 2001.

At least 16 people have been killed in the violence this year.

They include five policemen and a civilian killed in Pattani where three police checkpoints were attacked on Thursday.

An Islamic separatist movement had thrived in the south for years but it faded away in 1984, following an amnesty for the insurgents.

Violence resurfaced in the area in 2001. The government maintained it was the work of bandits or other common criminals.

However, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government recently admitted that Islamic militants from the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiah were present in the country. -- AP