"The website was constructed to enhance the window of knowledge on Thailand for a wider Arab and Muslim public and thus, would serve to promote greater people-to-people contact," a statement posted in English on the website said yesterday.

The website, www.Thai2Arab.com, highlights the diversity of the Buddhist-majority Kingdom by making references to its Islamic banks, the potential of the halal food industry and a short background on how Islam came to Thailand.

The launch comes amid a campaign of violence in the Muslim-majority southernmost provinces, in which more than 1,700 people, mostly Muslims, have been killed since January 2004.

The authorities have blamed the violence on ethnic Malays fighting to separate the three southernmost provinces from the country, while local Muslims and human rights groups have blamed the authorities for inflaming the divisions between the two sides, accusing them of abductions, extrajudicial killings and kidnapping.