Bush invites Southeast Asian leaders to Texas but Myanmar junta chief unlikely to be there

SYDNEY, Australia: U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday invited Southeast Asian leaders to his Texas ranch this year but it was unclear if Myanmar's junta chief, whom Bush has blasted as a tyrant, would be there.

Bush issued the invitation to heads of state of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations over lunch in Sydney with seven of them, said Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, one of the leaders present.

The invitation to a Texas summit was intended in part to make up for Bush's earlier cancellation of celebrations in Singapore to mark the 30th anniversary of Washington's ties with the ASEAN bloc.

"He invited us to Texas," Arroyo told reporters. "We'll have it done there at the convenience of ASEAN."

Bush and the leaders and senior ministers from seven of ASEAN's 10 member countries were in Australia's business capital for a summit of another grouping, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

The seven in APEC are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The three ASEAN members not in APEC are Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

No date has been set for the summit, said Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo.

Asked if Bush's invitation extended to all ASEAN members, including Myanmar, Romulo said he believed it was so since the American president invited the whole bloc.

But Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta that rules Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, would not likely be welcome.

Washington is among Myanmar's harshest critics, with Bush renewing his criticisms on Wednesday for the junta's recent suppression of pro-democracy advocates.

"It's inexcusable that we have this kind of tyrannical behavior in Asia," Bush said at a joint news conference in Sydney with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is hosting this year's APEC summit.

Myanmar's junta has beaten and detained scores of activists and used gangs of hired thugs in Yangon, the capital, to curtail a rare wave of protests last month that began after fuel prices were raised overnight by as much as 500 percent.

Even fellow ASEAN members have grown more critical of Myanmar's dismal human rights records despite the group's bedrock policy of noninterference in each other's domestic affairs.

During a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday, Romulo said he expressed ASEAN's concern over Myanmar's failure to abide by a roadmap to democracy it agreed to follow a decade ago.

"It's now 10 or 11 years, and we are still waiting," Romulo said he told Rice. "There is now impatience in the ASEAN about the fact it's not working out the way we thought it would work out."