Thai police will provide maximum security for 36 couples who plan to exchange vows in an annual mass underwater wedding in Trang, Southern Thailand, an official said Friday.

The eighth annual underwater wedding event in Thailand, scheduled for 13-15 February 2004 in Trang province, is expected to draw more than 20,000 Thai and foreign tourists to Trang.

Police will be on hand at the airports, hotels, the beaches, wherever the wedding couples and guests are, said police Major General Surapol Thongprasert. He said some 1,500 policemen would be mobilized to insure security for this year's underwater wedding ceremony.

Trang province, located about 890 kilometers (550 miles) south of Bangkok, is a safe distance from Thailand's south predominantly Muslim provinces where raiders brazenly attacked a Thai army camp on 4 January 2004 and torched 21 schools. The Thai government suspects that Islamic militants, with possible links to international terrorist networks, were involved.

Trang province in Thailand is rather free of violence and is not a target for terrorists, but we are deploying maximum police force to make the tourists confident and happy while staying in Thailand, the Thai police general said in a telephone interview.

He said plainclothes police will be among the marchers in a colorful procession of the wedding couples, dressed in traditional Thai costumes, through the provincial capital. Details about this year's participants for the underwater wedding in Trang were not immediately available.

In the past, hundreds of couples, both Thais and foreigners, have tied the knot on the seabed off Trang while equipped with scuba gear. The underwater wedding event was originally organized to publicize the tourist attractions of Trang province in Thailand and especially its beaches.