Nonthaburi  Governor Pranai Suwannarat is a leading candidate to chair the revived  administration centre for the South.

The former Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC) will be dusted off and given a new name and wider responsibility.

The new Southern Border Provinces Development Centre's main task will be to oversee development and justice in the troubled South.

Ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra dissolved the SBPAC in 2001, saying there was no longer a need for such a body. However, the decision has been blamed for inflaming tensions in the region and provoking violent attacks by suspected militants.

"Interior Minister Aree Wongsearaya will talk to Pranai today when he inspects flooding in Nonthaburi," an informed source said yesterday.

Pranai is a brother of privy councillor Palakorn Suwannarat and was formerly a district chief of Sai Buri district in Pattani.

He was tipped to become Chiang Mai governor in the next Interior reshuffle. The source said that if Pranai declined, another contender was former Songkhla governor Somporn Chaibangyang.

The Cabinet recently appointed Somporn director-general of the Local Administration Department.

The new centre will remain under Interior-Ministry administration and will have a broader sweep than its predecessor.

It will have responsibility in five provinces - all of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat and four districts of Songkhla and Satun. The SBPAC looked after Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat only.

Nimu Makaje, a leading Yala Muslim cleric, said Somporn was the most suitable candidate.

"Somporn was governor of Songkhla and Pattani and deputy governor of Yala, so he knows a lot about the South and its problems. Pranai has less experience in the region: he was simply a district chief in Pattani," he said. Somporn is a familiar figure to local people and leaders, he stressed.

Kusdee Kubaha, deputy chairman of the Muslim association in Pattani, shared Nimu's opinion.

"I believe [Somporn] has more information and experience than anyone," he said.

Meanwhile, a marine who was seriously injured in a bomb blast in Narathiwat last week died yesterday of head wounds. Private Wachirawut Kerdsuwan, 22, was among two soldiers injured in the blast, which also injured five monks. Doctors said he had been in a coma ever since. Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who made a quick, unannounced visit to the five monks and the two marines on Friday, said he personally knew the parents of Wachirawut, who was then in a critical condition.

"I told his father to be proud of his son, as he had carried out his duty to the best of his ability," Surayud said on Friday.

A worker at a rubber plantation in Pattani was shot dead yesterday, less than 12 hours after Surayud made a lightning visit to Songkhla.

Suspected insurgents shot worker Ruemkaew Kraikrong, 53, before dawn yesterday while he was riding a motorcycle with his wife to a rubber plantation in Pattani's Kok Pho district, police said.

On Friday evening suspected insurgents killed a married couple on a motorcycle in Yala's Bannang Sata district. Their three-year-old daughter was shot in the head and seriously wounded.

Surayud yesterday greeted 90 Muslim students, many from Islamic schools in the South, as they arrived in Bangkok for a three-week educational tour, part of a programme to broaden the horizons of Muslim youths who have had little exposure to other parts of the country.

Surayud is scheduled to make a one-day trip to the South on Thursday.