NARATHIWAT, Thailand (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra went to the homes of alleged guerrilla leaders in the Muslim south on Friday, telling their families and friends that militants would be treated fairly if they surrendered.

However, his mixed reception from non-Thai-speaking locals, who either failed to understand him or who were too intimidated to talk, emphasised the problems faced by Bangkok's Buddhist government in the restive Muslim-majority, ethnic Malay region.

In the village of Tanyong Limoh, where Muslim youths murdered two captive marines last month in one of the grisliest episodes of 21 months of violence, Thaksin's attempts to speak to villagers were met by embarrassed silence.

"Does anyone know what happened that night? Anyone know? You can be rewarded," he told women and children lined up to meet the government delegation, which had roared into the quiet hamlet in a 50-vehicle cavalcade.

Eventually, an official jumped in to save his blushes, asking if anybody in the crowd knew the Prime Minister's name. A boy who gave the correct answer was given 500 baht ($12), the equivalent of three days' unskilled labour.

Travelling in a bullet-proof Mercedes, Thaksin also visited the family of Sapaeing Bazo, who has a 10 million baht ($250,000) bounty on his head as a suspected mastermind of the unrest in which more than 900 people have been killed.

"When he contacts you again, please tell him that the Prime Minister has visited and guaranteed his safety," Thaksin told Bazo's wife. Sadina Sulong, sitting alongside her and her daughter in the living room of their two-storey home.

"If he doesn't feel comfortable, he could inform a provincial governor or fly to Don Muang Airport and I will pick him up. I am more than ready to give him justice," he said, referring to Bangkok's airport.

Sadina said she did not think the surrender of her husband, the head of an Islamic school before he went into hiding, would end unrest which has alarmed foreign investors and governments, who fear it could suck in the likes of al Qaeda.

"What we are afraid of is a kangaroo court," Sadina said in Thai -- a second language for the Malay Muslims who make up the vast majority of the 1.8 million people in the violence-hit southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

Her daughter, Deena, said she had not heard from her 69-year-old father since he ran away last December and did not understand why he was a wanted man. Police accuse him of encouraging his students to kill government officials.

Going through a list of Thailand's most wanted, Thaksin also stopped off at the home of Romalee Utrasin, believed to be a leader of the BRN Coordinate, one of several separatist groups behind the intensifying violence.

"Please tell him the prime minister was here," he told a relative of Romalee, who is accused of involvement in a coordinated attack in July on the provincial capital of Yala in which two policemen were killed.

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