Australia called on China and India on Tuesday to pressure Myanmar to end rights abuses and democratize faster, saying efforts by Southeast Asia and the West have failed to move Yangon’s “insensitive” leaders.

 Military-ruled Myanmar, also called Burma, has been the target of stinging criticism at this week’s annual gathering in Manila of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ foreign ministers and their dialogue partners, including Australia.
 Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Western sanctions and threats as well as ASEAN’s approach of “constructive engagement” have failed to convince Myanmar’s military junta to end years of rights abuses and make significant progress along a “roadmap” to democracy.
 

“I hate to say this but it seems to me that nothing has worked,” Downer told reporters on the sidelines of the Manila meetings.
 

Myanmar’s “leadership seems completely insensitive to and impervious to the views of the outside world,” he said.
 

 Downer said China and India, which have important economic ties with Myanmar, should make its ruling junta realize that current political conditions there jeopardize the small Southeast Asian nation’s future.
 

Diplomats from Malaysia and the Philippines said ASEAN would continue to engage Myanmar.
 

“ASEAN state members as partners … will not” run out of patience, Filipino diplomat Rosario Manalo said.
 

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said ASEAN knows “we need to keep pushing.”
 

Downer said he displayed his exasperation when he met his Myanmar counterpart, Nyan Win, in a meeting in Manila.
 

Downer told him that in more than a decade of meetings with Myanmar’s top diplomats, he has repeatedly asked when the junta would undertake democratic reforms or release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
 

“I said to the foreign minister, ‘I suppose, this time next year, if I’m back again, you’ll just give me the same answer — constitutional reform still under way,’” he said. “It’s been under way for more than a decade.”
 

Asked what was the best approach toward Myanmar, Downer said governments have no choice but to persistently demand change.
 

ASEAN has repeatedly said it hopes to encourage democratic reforms in Myanmar through “constructive engagement” with the junta, but has made little progress.
 

ASEAN foreign ministers expressed concern to Myanmar on Monday about its slow pace of change and urged it to “show tangible progress that would lead to a peaceful transition to democracy in the near future.”
 

“We continue to express concern on the detention of all political detainees and reiterate our calls for their early release,” they said in a statement.
 

Syed Hamid said the group specifically mentioned opposition leader Suu Kyi, but that Myanmar did not promise to free her.