Southeast Asian nations on Friday demanded that military-ruled Myanmar expedite democratic reforms and free Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, in the strongest display yet of their growing frustration with the junta.

South Korea, meanwhile, signed a trade accord with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, leaving out Thailand for now because of a rice dispute, but paving the way for a broader free trade deal with the region.

Myanmar has pledged to allow democracy under strong pressure from its neighbors as well as the U.S. and other Western powers, but has so far failed to deliver.

ASEAN foreign ministers made clear their exasperation with fellow member Myanmar at their annual Asian conference in Kuala Lumpur, said host Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar.

“I don’t think any single country in ASEAN does not feel impatient and does not feel uncomfortable, because it does create problems and difficulties for us,” Syed Hamid said.

Myanmar needs “to be more responsive to the wishes of the international community,” he said.

The ministers were preparing for meetings of ASEAN leaders Monday and Tuesday that will be followed by the inaugural East Asia Summit on Wednesday.

The final summit will draw together the 10 ASEAN nations with Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand in a still-evolving plan to form a regional economic community of 3 billion people. Russia hopes to join the bloc later.

But those efforts must overcome key regional rivalries.

A hoped-for rapprochement at the summit between heavyweights China and Japan has been a nonstarter, with the Chinese foreign minister on Friday blaming Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to a notorious war shrine for the sour ties.

“One country’s leader visits a shrine to worship war criminals. This is unacceptable,” Li Zhaoxing told reporters.

China has strongly protested visits by Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, including several executed for war crimes. Many Chinese believe Japan has never appropriately apologized for its brutal World War II occupation.

India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said negotiations are almost complete for an India-ASEAN free trade area, which should be in place on Jan. 1, 2007. Japan’s Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai said his country’s free trade talks with ASEAN had failed so far, but would continue in an informal setting.

Trade ministers for South Korea and nine of the ASEAN nations signed an accord on free trade in goods – excluding rice, an industry Seoul protects in the face of militant lobbying by its farmers.

Top world rice exporter Thailand objected to that exclusion and stayed out of the accord, for now, saying it would negotiate its entry later.

However, it was expected to nonetheless join its Southeast Asian neighbors on Tuesday in committing to a broader free trade deal with South Korea to create a market with a combined economy of more than US$1.4 trillion (euro1.2 trillion) by 2010.

“Rice is a very important issue for Thailand because more than 70 percent of Thai people are farmers,” Thai Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak said.

Trade issues briefly took a back seat when ASEAN delivered its rebuke to Myanmar, which has declined to meet neighbors’ demands to democratize and free pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi.

ASEAN members have become increasingly critical of Myanmar in public, despite the bloc’s traditional policy of noninterference in each other’s internal affairs.

Syed Hamid said that his Myanmar counterpart, Nyan Win, gave no indication when the junta would free Suu Kyi from more than two years of detention. Her house arrest was extended by six months last week.

He said Myanmar must “create credibility” with “some tangible movement” in the junta’s self-proclaimed road map to democracy, which has achieved little in the last year. Thailand asked to see a “rapid move” toward democracy and Suu Kyi’s release.

The junta reopened a convention on Monday to set guidelines for a new constitution in a process it says will eventually lead to elections. Critics are skeptical because the convention doesn’t include Suu Kyi’s party.

Myanmar’s junta seized power in 1988. It called elections in 1990, but when Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide, the military refused to hand over power.