Bangkok  - The Thai government has deployed 18,000 soldiers and police with martial law-style powers to protect the leaders due to attend the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit that starts Thursday.

The government is keen to avoid a repeat of an April summit cancellation when protestors loyal to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra forced their way into the meeting.

"Security is extremely tight, so the meeting should be undisturbed," Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Tanatip Sawangsaeng said.

The security forces are focusing on the summit venue at Hua Hin as well as the capital for fear that Thaksin's supporters would attempt to embarrass Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

"It is believed people looking to create disturbances might cause incidents in Bangkok to divert attention away from the summit," said government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn, who was quoted in the Nation newspaper. If protestors do threaten the summit at the seaside resort town of Hua Hin, 130 kilometres south of Bangkok, several escape routes have been mapped out, Panitan said. Thaksin, overthrown in a bloodless military coup in September 2006 and now in self-imposed exile to avoid a two-year jail sentence for abuse of power, is threatening to use his popularity with the poor to return to power.

The controversial telecommunications tycoon-turned-populist politician is considered corrupt and authoritarian by much of the Thai elite and the middle class. The ASEAN summit is bringing together the group's members Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The Hua Hin meeting is to also include a summit between ASEAN and the three East Asian powers of China, Japan and South Korea as well as a summit of ASEAN leaders with their counterparts from Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. (IANS)