China does it with the USA and the West all the time when they are caught out. Vietnam seems to be getting a free ride and hiding in the shadows as if not for Burma, they would be in the hot seat.
The list goes on to include all of them, just to a lesser degree. The same applies to the West, to a greater or lesser degree, you decide?
Pete
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MANILA (AFP) - Southeast Asian nations headed into a week of security and political talks Sunday looking to seal a landmark cooperation deal but sharply divided on how to tackle human rights abuses -- and each other.
Despite two years of work, the 10-nation ASEAN bloc failed to hammer out agreement on a proposed human rights commission as part of a new charter that the group will approve this week and formally adopt later in the year.
Diplomats said strong opposition from military-ruled Myanmar, a bane of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and a target of international criticism and sanctions, helped scupper the commission.
"There was no agreement," one diplomat, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The charter is intended to turn ASEAN, which marks its 40th anniversary next month, into a rules-based organisation roughly along the lines of the European Union, with norms that all countries would have to adhere to.
However, the bloc could not agree on how to punish nations which violate those norms or on a human rights commission to investigate members' behaviour as it struggles to shake off a tradition of non-interference in each other's affairs.
Sanctions for punishment have been ruled out of the charter, and Sunday's failure on the commission means the bloc effectively has only a matter of weeks to try again before the document is adopted at a Singapore summit in November.
"There is a universal declaration of human rights in the charter of the United Nations," Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo of the Philippines, whose country has been pressing the issue, said on Saturday as the talks dragged on.
"It's a universal desire that there must be a human rights commission, and I believe that ASEAN can do no less," he said.
Member states have also battled over whether to abandon their policy of operating on consensus in favour of taking decisions by vote -- a move which would also amount to forcing individual countries to abide by group rules.
That has been a particularly tricky question when it comes to Myanmar.
The pariah state, formerly known as Burma, has drawn international sanctions by refusing to start restoring democracy and continuing to keep pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
"Non-interference in internal affairs may have been the factor that has kept socially responsible ASEAN members silent over human rights violations in the past," said Tint Swe, a member of her political party living in exile.
"The time has come to change that attitude," he told AFP.
The foreign ministers of ASEAN -- which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- were to open their meetings on Sunday night.
Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win was expected to brief the ministers on the latest developments in the country, but diplomats said they expected little new from the hermit state despite mounting world pressure for reforms.
"We want to hear something more tangible from the minister," said a senior Southeast Asian diplomat who declined to be named.
A "roadmap" laid out by the junta to restore democracy -- the country has been ruled by the military since 1962, and Aung San Suu Kyi's party was not allowed to govern despite winning polls in 1990 -- has been derided as a sham.
Apart from the contentious issues, diplomats said, 90 percent of the rest of the charter is on track as the group looks ahead to a possible regional free-trade zone and better cooperation on terrorism and nuclear power.
Meanwhile Asia's main security grouping, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), will hold its annual two-day meeting starting on Wednesday.
ARF includes all of ASEAN as well as key partners including the European Union, the United States, Australia, China, Russia, India and Pakistan.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not attend, but Washington will be represented by her deputy John Negroponte.
The top US negotiator on North Korea, Christopher Hill, was also due in Manila on Tuesday, the US embassy confirmed. But there was no word if he would hold talks with North Korea, which will also attend.
