by Shen Min     

    BANGKOK, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's National Police Commissioner-General Pol. Gen. Kowit Wattana was dismissed on Monday and removed to an unaffective position in the aftermath of the New Year's Eve bombings.

    News network The Nation reported on Monday that Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont signed an order on the day to transfer Kowit to the Prime Minister's Office, a usual practice when the Thai premier sacks some senior official.

    The order also appointed Pol. Gen. Seripisut Temeeyaves, an adviser attached to the Royal Thai Police as acting police chief, the report said.

    The order took immediate effect.

    Since the New Year's Eve bombings in Bangkok and its suburb which killed three persons and injured some 40 others, Kowit has been under great pressure from the current Surayud-led government and its military backer the Council for National Security (CNS), whose members earlier were quoted by local media as implicating that Kowit, as police chief, should take responsibility if the police's investigation into the bombings produced no material results in time, as the situation has so far suggested.

    The government has pointed the finger at ousted prime minister Thaskin Shinawatra's supporters and allies as being behind the New Year's Eve bombings, but by now no arrest of any culprit or perpetrator has been made. 19 suspects, some from military, had been earlier detained but later released due to lack of evidence.

    The calls to sack Kowit were intensified following the latest bomb attacks at the Daily News newspaper headquarters building and the adjacent Rama Gardens Hotel's parking lot in Bangkok.

    The two small explosions on last Tuesday caused no injuries. No one had been arrested on the case.

    There have long been suspicions that Kowit, said to have close connection with former premier Thaksin, was not doing his utmost to solve the case, according to a website report on Bangkok Post.

    Kowit, who joined the military leaders to launch the Sept. 19 coup last year to oust Thaksin, was announced as member of the Administrative Reform Council (ARC), which later transformed into the CNS and installed the interim government.

    However, speculations began to mount after that against him about a rift between him and the military leaders.