Bangkok - The new Thai foreign minister, Kasit Piromya, apologized Wednesday for implying the closure of Bangkok's airports had been fun.

The former diplomat said on his first day at work that his remarks were misinterpreted and not intended to hurt anyone, according to the Nation newspaper online.

Kasit was a controversial pick as foreign minister because he was a supporter of the militant People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which overran and seized Bangkok's two commercial airports for a week in order the pressure the previous government to resign.

Kasit told a meeting of diplomats and academics last week that the seizure of Suvarnabhumi airport had been "a lot of fun," adding that "the food was excellent, the music was excellent." He told the meeting the cost to the country of closing the airports was the price paid to "move democracy forward."

The airport occupations was followed by a constitutional court decision to dissolve the former government's political parties for electoral fraud but they are conservatively estimated to have cost the country 3 billion dollars in lost exports and cancelled holidays.

Kasit, a respected former ambassador, had regularly appeared - and spoken to the crowd - at the government's seat in Bangkok when it was occupied by the PAD for several months, forcing the then government to flee to alternative quarters. He later turned up at Bangkok's main airport when it was in PAD hands.

A leading member of the rival "red shirt" brigade of militants who support fugitive prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Jatuporn Prompan, demanded Tuesday that Kasit be ejected from the new government for making light of actions that had severely damaged the economy.

Jatuporn warned newly appointed Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva that he should not allow a "terrorist who had seized an airport to become a minister," according to the Thai News Agency.

The red shirts will decide at a central Bangkok rally this weekend whether to march on Parliament for the reading of the new government's policy statement, said Jatuporn.

The new Thai five-party coalition government sworn in this week was able to take power after the courts dismantled parties loyal to self-exiled Thaksin - a hate figure for many of Bangkok's elite citizens. But a great swath of the rural poor still support the dynamic tycoon who wooed them with populist economic policies that the new Democrat Party-led government appears intent on copying.

Exports fell in November by 18.6 per cent for the first time in six years, partly because of the airport closures and the near-collapse of working government.

With the economy expected to show little or no growth next year the new government's informal links to the PAD could become a liability, analysts say. (dpa)