Thai police said yesterday they would not break up an anti-government rally in Bangkok after an apparent reversal by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej.

Earlier in a televised address to the nation, Samak had threatened police action against the protests that have ignited fears of a military coup.

"We have been ordered by the prime minister not to break up the crowd tonight. "He is concerned about their safety and he wants us to continue to talk to them," national police spokesman Lt. Gen. Vatcharapol Prasanratchkij told reporters at the rally.

Several hundred riot police with shields and batons watched the peaceful 6,500-strong rally on the Makawan Rangsan Bridge near the gilded Grand Palace in the heart of Bangkok.

Samak's warning had come a day after a Cabinet minister resigned in a move aimed at preventing the protests, which were similar to those against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra before he was ousted in a 2006 coup.

"You have to clear out or the police will clear you out," Samak said initially of the protests which began last Sunday when 20 people were injured in clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters in the capital.

But as night fell, Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said police would not move against the mainly middle-class crowd, who appeared in a festive mood.

"The prime minister has no objective to break up any rally," Chalerm said on Channel 9 television.

Earlier, Samak had accused the anti-Thaksin People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which vowed on Friday to step up protests against the government, of breaking the law and damaging the country.

"What we know for sure is that if any violence occurs, it will come only from the government side, not ours," Somsak Kosaisuk, one of five PAD leaders, told Reuters.