Thailand must negotiate with leaders of an ethnic Malay Muslim separatist insurgency if it wants to end bloodshed in its troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces, the country’s army chief said on Friday.

General Sondhi Boonyaratkalin said the violence, which has claimed more than 1,500 lives, would not be quelled if authorities only arrested the foot-soldiers of the militancy, but refused to talk to its instigators. “It is necessary to talk to make lasting peace,” Gen Sondhi, the first Muslim to head the Thai army, told Thai journalists on Friday.