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HUA HIN, Thailand - Asian leaders heard competing plans from Australia and Japan for a massive EU-style economic and political bloc as they wrapped up an annual summit in Thailand on Sunday.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd presented his counterparts with his grand vision for an Asia-Pacific Community, possibly by 2020, in a bid to boost the region's global influence.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is also going to push his rival plan for an East Asian community, a day after saying the region that is home to more than half of the Earth's population should aim to "lead the world."
Leaders in the Thai resort of Hua Hin were also due to sign agreements Sunday on boosting integration after the global recession and cooperating on subjects including climate change and disaster management.
The summit grouping the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand has been dominated by discussions on greater unity.
But it has also been marred by controversy over human rights -- especially in military-ruled Myanmar -- bitter border disputes and signs of apathy over a meeting that was twice delayed by protests.
Rudd said he would address leaders on his plans over a working lunch.
"What I detect across the region is an openness to a discussion about how we evolve our regional architecture into the future," Rudd told reporters, according to the AAP news agency.
"I have not set an urgent timeline on this, I have in fact suggested a timeline of 2020."
Hatoyama would address the same lunch on his East Asian plan and suggest that "through building up regional cooperation in many sectors we will be able to steadily reach a common understanding," a Japan delegation spokesman said.
Japan has said that the bloc would include the 16 members at the summit but there has been debate over a role for the United States. Rudd did not spell out the membership for his proposed bloc.
ASEAN leaders are also set to restate their commitment to creating their own political and economic community by 2015.
The Australian and Japanese plans would be built on a series of free-trade pacts in place between ASEAN and its trading partners. Officials said there would soon be a feasibility study on a pact between ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea.
Meanwhile, renewed criticism over the region's stance on human rights has taken the shine off the summit.
The launch Friday of what ASEAN said was a "historic" rights commission was overshadowed by the barring of several leading campaigners from a meeting with the region's leaders to discuss the new body.
Activists also slammed ASEAN for failing to press for the release of detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, although the leaders called for Myanmar's elections next year to be free and fair.
Myanmar's Prime Minister Thein Sein told his counterparts that the junta could relax the conditions of her house arrest, which was extended by 18 months in August.
Divisions between key member-states also undermined the supposed theme of unity.
Host nation Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia remained at loggerheads over the fate of fugitive former Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, after Cambodian Premier Hun Sen offered him a job as his economic adviser.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao agreed with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during talks on the summit's sidelines Saturday to work towards narrowing differences on a long-simmering dispute over the Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh, Chinese state media reported.
Around 18,000 troops and dozens of armoured vehicles have been deployed in Hua Hin after the Asian summit was twice postponed by anti-government protests led by supporters of the exiled Thaksin.
- AFP/ir
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