Bangkok  - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Saturday his fugitive rival Thaksin Shinawatra has cancelled his plans to speak to reporters in Hong Kong.

Supporters of the former prime minister said however that Monday's address to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong will go ahead.

Abhisit has instructed the foreign ministry and Attorney-General's office to try to extradite Thaksin if he is located in Hong Kong.

"The latest I have learnt (is) that he is cancelling his speech," said Abhisit, quoted in the Nation.

Thaksin, a hugely controversial figure in Thailand, has been in self-exile since August 2008 after a Thai court gave him a two-year jail term for a corrupt land deal.

The former telecoms tycoon remains very popular with the rural poor, who like his populist economic policies, but he is deeply distrusted elsewhere for his allegedly overweening ambition. Thaksin was overthrown by a September 2006 military coup.

Military and legal machinations following the seizure of Bangkok's airports by royalist activists late last year enabled the Democrat Party to form a coalition government, without facing an election, earlier this year.

The current government is trying to consolidate its power and legitimacy at a time of economic crisis - and does not want interference from the still politically potent former leader, say analysts.

Thaksin will go ahead with a speech that will focus on the unfolding global crisis, said a spokesman for him in Bangkok, Pongthep Thepkanchana, according to the Bangkok Post.

A leader of the pro-Thaksin United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship campaign group, Natthawut Saikua, said the government was driven by political motives in seeking to tame Thaksin and not, as it claimed, by a desire for justice.

Politicians close to the Thaksin camp have warned that there could be turmoil in Thailand if he were brought back to the country under arrest. The former prime minister has comfortably won all four elections he, or a proxy, have fought since 2001.

A newly created People Power Party won the last general election on 23 December 2007. Pro-Thaksin Red Shirts insist the Democrat-led government lacks legitimacy since the Democrats did not win the largest number of seats in the last election. (dpa)