New Thai PM a model general who shunned politics

But the career army officer, who was made interim prime minister on Sunday by Thailand's latest military rulers, denied giving any orders to shoot and said the bloodshed hammered home a message he had pondered throughout his days in uniform.

"It convinced me that the army should never be involved in politics," he said on national television in the aftermath of the uprising, which stemmed from the previous year's military take-over -- Thailand's 17th since the 1930s.

Fifteen years and one coup later, the 63-year-old former army commander-in-chief and devout Buddhist faces a re-run of history.

Following the September 19 military putsch against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Surayud has become head of a stop-gap government charged with keeping the country and economy ticking over while an eminent persons panel draws up a new constitution.

Coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin has promised elections within a year but, as with 1991, there are concerns the shadow of the army, in the form of a Council for National Security, will loom large over the process and beyond.

For Surayud, Sonthi's direct superior at the Special Warfare Command in the early 1990s and one of Time Magazine's "Asian Heroes" in 2003 for his efforts to instill modern values into the Thai military, it could be a testing time.

"He earned a lot of respect as a man of his word, as a professional soldier," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

In many ways, he's the iconic army chief in the minds of Thais. Someone who was professional, capable, competent -- and reluctant to mess around with politics."

FOUGHT HIS FATHER
Born into a distinguished military family, Surayud's boyhood was turned upside down when his father, a lieutenant-colonel, disappeared into the jungle to become a key member of the Communist underground.

According to Time, as an anti-communist platoon leader in the 1960s Surayud was haunted by visions of killing his father, who defected because he had come to see the army as an institution more concerned with enriching itself than serving the people.

Despite being battlefield adversaries, Surayud could not but admire his father's principles. "He taught me how to be a good officer," he said. "He taught me how to be a good citizen of this country."

It was a lesson he would not forget, when, three decades later, Democrat Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai asked him to become commander-in-chief of the army with a mandate for reform. On the domestic front, he created rapid response units to deal with the threat from drug-funded ethnic militias in neighbouring Myanmar, but was prepared to negotiate in several hostage situations that could have turned into bloodbaths.

Internationally, he sent soldiers to the United Nations peace-keeping effort in East Timor, the first time Thai troops had been deployed in such a role. They have since performed similar duties in Indonesia's Aceh and in Afghanistan.

But despite his popularity in reshaping the army's public image, rumours abounded of clashes between Surayud and Thaksin, who came to office after an election landslide in 2001.

Two years later, Thaksin appointed him Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, a move widely interpreted as a "kick upstairs" to pave the way for the promotion of his cousin, Chaisit Shinawatra, to the position shortly afterwards.

Upon Surayud's retirement as Supreme Commander, revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej appointed him to the Privy Council, where he played a key role alongside former prime minister Prem Tinsulanonda in representing the monarch.