Russian arms dealer to face trial in Thailand-police

BANGKOK, March 7 (Reuters) - Viktor Bout, the alleged "Merchant of Death" of the clandestine arms trade arrested in a U.S. sting operation in Thailand, will stand trial in Bangkok before extradition is considered, police said on Friday.

The Russian, arrested at a hotel hours after landing in Bangkok on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow on Thursday, faced a charge of "seeking or gathering assets for terrorism," in line with an international warrant, Police Lieutenant General Adisorn Nonsee Adisorn said.

Bout, charged in New York with conspiring to sell weapons worth millions of dollars to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, faces up to 10 years in jail if found guilty in Thailand.

The United States, which has given billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia to fight the Marxist rebels and drug cartels, plans to seek Bout's extradition, but Adisorn said that would have to wait until after he was tried in Thailand.

"Bout has to be tried in Thailand before extradition," Adisorn told a news conference where Bout was paraded for the media, guarded by heavily-armed Thai police commandos.

But a senior official said Thai police would move as quickly as possible after Bout was arrested on international arrest warrants as the U.S. authorities were already working on his extradition with Thai prosecutors.

"I think the Americans are working on two fronts -- the DEA to get police to arrest him and other agencies to get the Office of the Attorney-General to extradite him," Major-General Surapol Thuanthong told reporters.