Bangkok  - Thailand's new government has launched a thorough review of the use of martial law in the country's conflict-ridden deep South where some 3,500 have been killed over the past four years and will decide on its extension within three months.

"I will ask the people involved to now run a systematic review of the various laws, so the next time they ask for an extension it will not be automatic," said Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, addressing an audience at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand Wednesday night.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - have been under emergency decree since October 2005, allowing authorities to seize suspected separatists and keep them under dentition without charges, and providing immunity to security personnel engaged in such operations.

The decree has been extended 14 times, coming up for parliamentary approval every three months.

"My hope is that we will soon not have to rely on emergency decree to bring peace to the South," said Abhisit, who will visit the region over the weekend.

The decree has come under increasing criticism from human rights groups, such as London-based Amnesty International (AI) and New York-based Human Rights Watch, for creating an environment in which torture and abuses can be carried out without punishment.

AI on Tuesday exposed at least 34 documented cases of authorities torturing Muslim insurgents in Thailand's conflict-ridden south, four of whom died, and called on the government to clarify its legal stance on the practice.

"All the victims were Muslim, all but one were male, and 20 of them were under the age of 30; the youngest was a boy of six, the oldest 46," said the AI report titled Thailand: Torture in the Southern Counter-Insurgency, based on testimony compiled between mid-2007 and mid-2008.

Thailand has been waging a counterinsurgency campaign in the deep South since January 4, 2004, when a group of Muslim militants raided an army depot in the region, stealing more than 300 weapons and killing four soldiers.

The incident led to a series of government crackdowns on the region's long-simmering separatist movement that further alienated the local population from Thailand's Bangkok-based governments.

The majority of people in the deep south, once known as the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, are Muslim and have a long history of alienation from predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

Although the region was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.

Over the past five years the intensified separatist struggle has led to at least 3,500 deaths.

With nearly 45 per cent of Thailand's armed forces based in the three provinces there is a perception that the military have added to the problem, especially as they enjoy immunity under the emergency decree.

Abhisit, the leader of the Democrat Party that is popular in Thailand's southern provinces but has been in the opposition for eight years, has made a priority of restoring peace to the region.

The Oxford-educated politician, who was named prime minister last month, has vowed to bring reconciliation to Thailand, which has been torn by a deep political divide for the past three years, through an emphasis on rule of law.

"My basic assumption is that you will never have reconciliation unless there is justice," said Abhisit. "The same principle applies to the South." (dpa)