Anti-government protesters who have occupied Bangkok's main shopping district for two weeks today said they were open to talks with the Thai government.
The red shirt protestors also took steps to prepare for a clash with armed troops, who are threatening to forcibly evict them, by fortifying their base with bunkers built of sharpened bamboo poles and tyres.
In the country's northeastern Khon Kaen province, about 1,000 protesters seized an 18-car train carrying soldiers they believed to be headed to Bangkok.
The train was attempting to bring troops to Thailand's deep south to help contain a Muslim insurgency, a railway police officer told Reuters. Negotiations between a Khon Kaen deputy governor and red shirt leaders are continuing.
The anti-government protests have continued and a deadly clash on April 10th between the army and the demonstrators killed 25 people and wounded more than 800.
Interviews with leaders of the mostly rural and working-class red shirts indicated that they may bend on their demands for a snap election.
Kwanchai Praipana, a red shirt leader from their stronghold in northeast Thailand, said he would propose to the group's leaders they consider a three-month timeframe for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and call elections.
"The government has the upper hand and maybe we should show some flexibility," he told Reuters next to a stage of the rally site, where about 15,000 people have gathered in an area of department stores that have closed their doors for two weeks.
Talks between Mr Abhisit and the protesters collapsed last month after two rounds when the red shirts rejected an offer to dissolve parliament within nine months - a year early. It is unclear if Mr Abhisit would agree to a three-month timetable.
In recent days he has shown no sign of compromise. Government spokesman Panitan Watanayagorn said Mr Abhisit would be willing to hold talks with the protesters only if they agreed not to escalate tensions - a vague requirement that could suggest their rally must end before negotiations can resume.
He declined to elaborate or to comment on the protesters' insistence talks be conducted through a third party.
The offer of talks comes two days after hundreds of armed troops converged on a road in the financial district, just an intersection away from the shopping area controlled by the protesters. Some troops have guns trained on the protesters from atop a foot-bridge after the army said it might use force.
"They've seen the signs that the noose is tightening around their necks - there's not much appetite to become martyrs," Federico Ferrera, a political science professor at National University of Singapore, said of the protesters.
By nightfall, hundreds of pro-government demonstrators taunted the red shirts at the financial district intersection, held back by a thin line of riot police, as troops looked on.
Protesters hurled abuse back and set off firecrackers to unnerve soldiers, many armed with loaded M-16 assault rifles.
Analysts say the protests are radically different from any other period of unrest in Thailand's polarising five-year political crisis - and arguably in modern Thai history, pushing the nation close to an undeclared civil war.
The demonstrations have evolved into a dangerous standoff between the army and a rogue military faction that supports the protesters and includes retired generals allied with twice-elected and now fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The protesters have demanded immediate elections, but both sides want to be in power during a September military reshuffle.
If Thaksin's camp prevails and is governing at the time of the reshuffle, analysts expect big changes including the ousting of generals allied with Thailand's royalist elite, a prospect royalists fear could diminish the power of the monarchy.
Mr Abhisit came to power in December 2008 in an army-brokered parliamentary vote after the ruling pro-Thaksin party was dissolved for electoral fraud.
Reuters