Thousands of anti-government protesters defied a court order to leave Thai prime minister Samak Sundaravej's official compound today with the group's leaders vowing to stay until his administration fell.
Mr Samak, who ordered thousands of police to break up the rally at Government House yesterday, softened his tough stance after police failed to exercise arrest warrants overnight for nine leaders of the anti-government campaign.
"After thorough consideration, it would be too dangerous to do so," Mr Samak told reporters at army headquarters after being forced to abandon his main office this week.
"I've told the police not to break up the crowd, but to encourage people to leave," Mr Samak said of the 10,000 supporters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) camped on the Government House lawn behind makeshift barricades.
The PAD leaders are charged with inciting unrest and trying to overthrow the seven-month-old government, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
"We won't leave Government House as ordered by the Civil Court," one PAD leader, Chamlong Srimuang, told reporters.
"Our demands remain the same - to have the government resign and to prevent an amendment of the 2007 constitution," added Chamlong, an ascetic Buddhist and retired major-general.
That constitution was drawn up under an army-controlled administration after the military overthrew former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a 2006 coup.
The PAD accuses the government elected in December of being an illegitimate proxy of Thaksin, now in exile in London.
Thai rail workers began a partial strike today, joining the protest by thousands of people barricaded inside the prime minister's official compound.
As many as 80 train drivers and mechanics at a key rail junction connecting central Thailand to the north and northeast called in sick, disrupting at least five trains and stranding thousands of passengers, state rail officials said.