The ASEM club of Asian and European nations expanded Thursday, with Myanmar among 13 countries joining the grouping despite deep hostility from the European Union to its military rulers.

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), a forum for dialogue mainly focused on trade issues, grew to 39 members including the 10 countries that joined the European Union in May.

Myanmar was one of three members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also to join the club alongside Cambodia and Laos.

Leaders from both regions attended a flag-raising ceremony in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to mark the expansion, after the EU agreed not to boycott the gathering on condition Myanmar’s top generals stayed away.

But the EU’s Dutch presidency ratcheted up the pressure by saying the bloc would tighten its tough sanctions against Myanmar next week after the junta ignored a series of demands for democratic reform.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said in Hanoi that EU nations were reluctantly sitting down for talks with Myanmar at the ASEM summit partly “to exert pressure directly on the regime”.

“Secondly (to say) that we will impose a new set of sanctions and also make that crystal clear at the same meeting,” he said.

EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to expand a visa blacklist against Myanmar officials, ban EU companies from financing state-owned firms and oppose lending by international institutions such as the World Bank.

“I think it is also very important not only to give a political signal to Myanmar itself but also to other countries participating in this ASEM meeting that the European Union does not condone this behaviour,” Bot said.

The ASEM summit proper was to open Friday for two days of talks on issues such as trade, Iraq, North Korea, weapons non-proliferation, reform of the United Nations, disease control and cultural diversity.

Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts, whose Baltic country was among the EU entrants newly admitted to ASEM, said the enlargement was “an important milestone for all of us”.

“We will work towards fulfilling common goals in order to achieve greater economic integration in Asia and more rapid economic reforms in the EU,” he said.

But the efforts by Asia and Europe to upgrade their contacts have been overshadowed yet again by the Myanmar question.

Britain, Myanmar’s former colonial power which has been at the forefront of the EU’s diplomatic offensive against the junta, was represented in Hanoi by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

“We will be taking the opportunity of the summit to underline — not least to the regime itself — our concerns about the unacceptable situation in Burma (Myanmar) and its continued lack of progress towards democracy,” Prescott said.

However, Myanmar’s partners in ASEAN and elsewhere in Asia have proven more sympathetic to the junta’s arguments that it cannot be rushed into democratic reform, and that it will not be hectored by outside powers.

Beyond the formal ASEM dialogue, China was expected to renew its own offensive to persuade the EU to lift an arms embargo in place since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

France is pushing hard for the EU to end the weapons ban. But many in the bloc, including Britain, lean towards Washington’s position that this would be premature.

French President Jacques Chirac, who heads to China Friday from Vietnam, said the embargo “is of another time (and) does not correspond any more to the reality of the situation”.