Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra has vowed to end violence in the country's restive south, as more details emerged of his plans to tackle trouble spots.
Mr Thaksin, on a tour of the southern provinces, said he would use military muscle and economic sanctions to punish villages that failed to co-operate.
But local leaders warned the plan could backfire in the largely Muslim region.
"When [the Muslim world] find that we are being ignored or sanctioned... they will step in," said one Islamic leader.
Abdulrohman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, said Mr Thaksin's ideas would only succeed in pushing villagers into the arms of militants.
The BBC's correspondent in Bangkok, Kylie Morris, says Mr Thaksin's latest initiative is his most controversial yet.
Some 1,580 southern villages have been surveyed for their co-operation, and categorised as red, yellow or green, depending on the degree of violence found there.
TROUBLED SOUTH
Villages are designated as red if they are frequently violent, if they refuse to co-operate with the authorities, and if more than half the residents are judged to be sympathetic to the aims of the insurgents.
Three hundred and fifty-eight villages are cited as red zones, including 200 in the province of Narathiwat.
Mr Thaksin has said he will give more than $500m to villages across the country within the next 10 weeks, and each community's quota will depend on its colour code. Red zone villages will not get any money.
"We don't give money to those red villages because we don't want them to spend the money on explosives, road spikes or assassins," Mr Thaksin told villagers in Narathiwat on Wednesday.
Military threat
"If the money sanctions do not work, I will send soldiers to lay siege to the red zone villages and put more pressure on them," he said on Thursday.
"I will never allow anyone to separate even one square inch from this country, even though this land will have to be soaked with blood. So I'd like everyone to be friends with me. Don't be friends with bad guys," he said.
Mr Thaksin is meeting both Muslim and Buddhist leaders on his three-day tour.
The visit came as Thailand's Cabinet approved a new 12,000-strong infantry division to combat violence in the south.
More than 500 people have been killed in the south in a wave of violence blamed on Muslim insurgents.
In the past months, Buddhist monks, teachers, police and soldiers have been ambushed and murdered on an almost daily basis.
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