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BANGKOK, Nov. 26 -- Thailand's powerful military stepped into a battle Wednesday between the government and protesters occupying Bangkok's international airport, calling on the government to resign and the protesters to leave the buildings they have seized.

Both sides promptly rejected the appeal, intensifying a political crisis that threatens to ignite civil strife in the Southeast Asian nation.

On Tuesday night, protesters from the opposition People's Alliance for Democracy seized Suvarnabhumi Airport, the country's main international gateway, forcing it to close down and stranding thousands of passengers.

The action brought a long-running struggle between the opposition and the government to a fever pitch and prompted the military to intervene.

Thai Army chief Anupong Paochinda told a news conference Wednesday that Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat "should dissolve parliament and call a snap election" as a way to end the crisis.

But Somchai, speaking on national television following his return from a summit meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Peru, said his government was democratically elected and would remain in office for the "good of the country." He declared, "My position is not important. But democratic values are."

Somchai said his cabinet would meet Thursday to discuss what to do about the protesters.

People's Alliance spokesman Suriyasai Katasila also rejected the army chief's proposal, telling reporters that the protesters would not leave the airport "if Somchai does not quit."

On a Web site used by the People's Alliance to post official announcements, Sonthi Limthongkul, a leader of the group, appeared to set up another hurdle to Anupong's plan. He said the opposition would countenance negotiations only after the government had left office and that a resignation on its own would not be sufficient.

The standoff raised fears that the military could stage another coup, but Anupong ruled out such a move in his news conference, saying it would not resolve the crisis. The military removed Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister two years ago.

Thitinan Pongsudirak, who teaches political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said the army's solution is the least damaging of the narrowing options available to the country.

"This option does not get us out of the cycle," he said. "It won't on its own solve the crisis, but it would buy us some time. It could act as a relief valve."

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BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov. 25 -- Activists trying to bring down  Thailand's government seized key parts of the capital's main airport Tuesday, forcing authorities to cancel all flights and dealing another blow to the country's reeling tourist industry.

"We want to seize the airport to show the media that the prime minister cannot control anything in Thailand," Suwan Kansanoh, a retired government official who was among the  protesters, told journalists by phone.

The  airport raid was the culmination of two days of demonstrations billed by the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy as the "final mass rally" to oust the "killer government."

The government, led by Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, has refused to resign, insisting that the overwhelming mandate it won in elections held at the end of last year still stands.

At the core of the dispute lies the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra, the controversial telecommunications billionaire and former prime minister who was removed from office in a military coup in 2006 amid allegations of corruption and cronyism.

Thaksin inspires visceral hatred among PAD supporters, who believe that the current government is his proxy. Somchai is the former prime minister's brother-in-law.

But as last year's elections proved, Thaksin and his allies still have the support of Thailand's rural poor -- a constituency he and his successors have courted with cheap health care and subsidized loans.

Although PAD leaders had made bold predictions about this week's demonstrations, the turnout, at about 20,000 people, has been smaller than expected, and a threatened strike by state enterprise workers caused little disruption. Political analysts say that despite their success in disrupting operations at the airport, the movement is struggling to maintain momentum.

"The reality is that they can't raise the numbers on the streets to force anybody to do anything," said Chris Baker, a Bangkok-based political scientist who has written a number of books on Thailand's troubles.

The past two days had been mostly peaceful. But there was an outbreak of violence on Tuesday night when PAD guards fired on opponents. The shooters were apparently responding to pro-government protesters who allegedly threw stones at a car carrying PAD members returning from another rally. Local media reported that 11 people were injured.

Although it has managed to paralyze the political process for the past six months, the anti-government PAD has had little success in articulating an alternative vision to end Thailand's political stalemate.

Its platform of so-called "new politics" -- including a suggestion of rolling back democratic representation to make 70 percent of parliament appointed rather than elected --has found little traction among the wider population.

Baker said the group, which has a largely middle-class, urban support base, has started to fall victim to its own internal contradictions. Unable to win at the ballot box, or frighten the government into resigning, Baker said the group has been reduced to trying to provoke the sort of violence that would force the army to stage a coup. But that, in turn, is alienating its supporters.

"The people who support them are the sort of people who fear disorder above all things, and they are starting to worry," he said.

Gen. Anupong Paojinda, the army chief, said there would be no coup, even if violence broke out.

"The armed forces have agreed that a coup cannot solve our country's problems, and we will try to weather the current situation and pass this critical time," Anupong told reporters in Bangkok.

Over the past two days, the police have taken a deliberately nonconfrontational line, falling back as the PAD protesters, many of them armed with iron bars, wooden clubs or sling shots, advanced. The police tactics not only minimized the possibility of clashes, they also allowed the protesters to spread so widely that the demonstration became diffuse and directionless.

There are also economic pressures. Thailand is starting to feel the pain of the global slowdown, and many here worry that political paralysis is doing lasting damage to the country's ability to counter the mounting economic threat. The closure of Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi Airport will be another blow to a tourist industry already badly damaged by previous violent clashes between protesters and police.