BANGKOK, March 21 (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who says national reconciliation in the rebellious Muslim south is his top priority, ordered more police and civil servants to be sent to the region on Wednesday. Surayud issued the order during a trip to Pattani, one of the three provinces where more than 2,000 people have been killed in three years of insurgency, as the country's Buddhist majority demanded the government harden up its policy in the region.

"We have a range of problems to resolve from constraints of budget to personnel, which involves civil servants and police, so I have instructed them to increase their staff and efficiency," Surayud told reporters after a security meeting.

But Surayud repeated that he would not follow the hardline policies of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a bloodless military coup in September.

"We only stick to peace, not violence," he said.

Within days of taking office Surayud apologised for abuses by security forces in the three southernmost provinces, where 80 percent of people are Muslim ethnic Malay and do not speak Thai as a first language.

However, his push for talks and greater official recognition of Malay culture and language has set him on a collision course with many in Thailand's overwhelmingly Buddhist majority who reject any form of compromise.

Incidents such as last week's ambush of a minibus in which eight Buddhist civilians were killed has only increased pressure for another crackdown and revenge.

Surayud denied an accusation by New York-based Human Rights Watch that Thai security forces had "disappeared" Muslims in the region in a deliberate attempt to beat a growing rebellion.

"We have no such policy. What we are doing is to sort out the mess created by the previous government," he told reporters.

In a 69-page report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch detailed 22 unresolved cases in which it said the evidence indicated strongly that security forces were responsible, most of them while Thaksin was in power.

The real total was likely to be far higher because many families were too scared to speak out in fear of reprisals, it added.

There were about 10,000 police and 20,000 soldiers in the region, a former sultanate annexed by largely Buddhist Thailand a century ago, Thai security officials said.

But Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin told army-run Channel 5 Television only half the soldiers there were on patrol. The other half were doing desk jobs, he said.

AlertNet news is provided by