Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama pressed his regional counterparts to move towards the creation of an East Asian bloc and to take advantage of the region's more rapid recovery from the global recession compared to the West.

"It would be meaningful for us to have the aspiration that East Asia is going to lead the world," Hatoyama, who outlined proposals for the bloc after taking office last month, told the Bangkok Post newspaper.

The community would involve the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with regional partners China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, Japanese officials have said.

But as the Japanese premier outlined his proposals, there was debate at the summit in the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin over whether the grouping would also include the United States.

Hatoyama said Tokyo's alliance with Washington was the "cornerstone" of Japanese policy but urged the region to "try to reduce as much as possible the gaps, the disparities that exist amongst the Asian countries".

East Asian nations would carry out a feasibility study for a huge free trade zone covering ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea and also for a larger, looser grouping also involving India, Australia and New Zealand, officials said.

ASEAN leaders have been discussing plans to create their own political and economic community for Southeast Asia by 2015. They also launched the region's first ever human rights watchdog on Friday.

Increased integration has been a recurring theme of the meetings in Thailand, but rancorous rows over borders and human rights have dogged the summit.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao agreed with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during talks on the sidelines of the summit Saturday to work towards narrowing differences on a long-simmering border dispute, Chinese state media reported.

Beijing has voiced its opposition to a recent visit by Singh to Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian border state at the core of the dispute, and to a planned visit there next month by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

India and China clashed in 1962 in the area.

"The two sides agreed to continue talks, with the aim of incrementally removing the barriers to a solution that was fair and acceptable to both sides," the official Xinhua news agency said.

Indian officials would not confirm an agreement, but the country's external affairs ministry website said Singh "stressed that neither side should let our differences act as impediment to the growth of functional cooperation".

Host nation Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia however 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.

Meanwhile, ASEAN leaders in a statement on Saturday urged military-ruled member state Myanmar to hold free and fair elections in 2010 but made no mention of detained pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The group has faced international criticism in the past for failing to press Myanmar's junta to free Suu Kyi. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was sentenced to a further 18 months under house arrest in August.

The statement also said that communist North Korea should "comply fully with its obligations" under UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear programme and urged it to return to multi-nation disarmament talks.

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, with another 18,000 on standby or on duty in Bangkok.

earlier related report
Japan urges US to respect 'will of the people' over base
Japan told the United States on Thursday to respect its democratic process in a row over a US base and that the issue would not be resolved before President Barack Obama's visit next month.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada was speaking a day after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly pressed Tokyo to "move on" quickly with previously agreed plans to build a new US airbase on southern Okinawa island.

The issue has clouded the US-Japan security alliance since a centre-left government took power in Tokyo five weeks ago, vowing a less subservient relationship with Washington after half a century of conservative rule.

Japan's new government has said it will review an agreement to build the new base by 2014 -- a project opposed by many Okinawans who object to the US troop presence and complain of aircraft noise and the risk of accidents.

"The will of the people of Okinawa and the will of the people of Japan was expressed in the elections," Okada said on television, predicting that the issue won't be resolved before Obama's scheduled November 12-13 visit.

"I don't think we will act simply by accepting what the US tells us, just because the US is saying this, in such a short period of time."

The United States, which defeated Japan in World War II and then occupied the country, now has 47,000 troops stationed there, more than half of them on Okinawa, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Their presence has often caused friction with the local community, especially when American servicemen have committed crimes.

A flashpoint has been the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Base, located in a crowded urban area.

Under a 2006 bilateral agreement, the heliport functions of the base would be moved to a coastal area of Okinawa by 2014, while 8,000 Marines would be moved to Guam in a relocation to be partly financed by Japan.

However, the new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his left-leaning and pacifist coalition partners have advocated reviewing the deal and suggested the base be moved out of Okinawa or even out of Japan.

Gates, on a Tokyo visit Wednesday, publicly stressed "the importance of moving forward expeditiously on the roadmap as agreed."

The Yomiuri daily reported that the Pentagon chief had told Okada that Japan should approve the base move before Obama's visit.

Okada said on Thursday that Gates had "pressed and said Japan and the United States had negotiated this issue for as many as 13 years".

"But I told him that we, as an opposition party, had opposed the plan for those years," the foreign minister told Tokyo Broadcasting System Television.

"In the last general election, those opposing the current relocation plan won all the four constituencies on Okinawa. This shows the people's democratic will at this moment."

He added: "I have to question an attitude of insisting that this has been already decided and that there is no option but to implement it."

An analyst warned Japan should not take Washington's position lightly.

"Gates came here to remove a sticking point before Obama's visit," said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Waseda University.

"Washington's global strategy, and Okinawa's geopolitical significance, remain the same, even after the (US) administration changed," he said.

The US bases in Okinawa help the superpower with three major security objectives, he said -- "to counter terrorism, to contain China and Russia, and to tackle the threat of North Korea."

"Washington will probably think that Japan's new administration does not realise the significance of Okinawa," he said. "It may be inevitable that it will grow to distrust Japan as a reliable partner."

Okada, in his TV interview, also said the base issue should be resolved by the end of the year for local Okinawans.

"This discussion started in the first place because the current Futenma Air Base is extremely dangerous for local residents. We need to hurry to remove the danger."

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