(Recasts with comments on Myanmar)

By Raju Gopalakrishnan

MANILA, July 29 (Reuters) - A group of Southeast Asian nations sharply criticised fellow member Myanmar on Sunday for failing to restore democracy and keeping opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in detention.

It was a major departure from tradition for the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which usually avoids commenting on the internal affairs of member states.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, the host of a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers, said the comments were made at a dinner ahead of the main meeting that starts on Monday.

He said the Philippines was joined by several other nations in calling for the restoration of democracy in the former Burma and the release of Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May 2003.

"I sense there is impatience, there is frustration," Romulo told reporters. "So we urged Myanmar in the spirit of ASEAN that they should accelerate the process of the roadmap to democracy.

"This will not only benefit the people of Myanmar, but our own credibility as ASEAN will be enhanced."

He said Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win read out a prepared statement on restoring democracy, but did not refer to the calls for freeing Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 11 years in confinement since she returned from Britain in 1988.

Myanmar is seen as a pariah nation by the West but has been a member of ASEAN for the past decade. Several ASEAN members have however said the excesses of its military regime have cast all of Southeast Asia in a bad light.

CHARTER

Earlier on Sunday, ASEAN diplomats drafting a charter for the grouping said they had completed the first version but left out a provision creating a human rights body after it was blocked by Myanmar and some other nations.

The issue will be decided by foreign ministers on Monday.

"We've done our part," said one diplomat, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak for the task force that is drafting the charter.

"We're leaving it to our ministers to decide on how to deal with the creation of a human rights mechanism," he told Reuters.

The first draft, a copy of which was shown to Reuters, agreed to maintain the bloc's traditional way of deciding issues through a consensus and made no mention of sanctions for member states guilty of serious violations of the charter.

The three issues have polarised ASEAN, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia among those pushing for a human rights body and for a departure from ASEAN's time-honoured consensus diplomacy.

Myanmar is among those blocking the moves, while Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, which all have one-party governments, are also not comfortable with the ideas, diplomats have said.

Singapore and Brunei make up the rest of the grouping.

Earlier on Sunday, ASEAN foreign ministers adopted a five-year work plan to strengthen the implementation of a treaty banning nuclear weapons in the region.

Since 1997, the treaty creating the South East Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) has been in force in the region, limiting the use of nuclear power by members to peaceful purposes, such as power generation.

The 10 ASEAN nations have all signed the treaty.

"The work plan was formulated to provide tangible plans and benchmarks that will align the activities of member-states under the treaty," said Philippine foreign affairs spokesman Claro Cristobal.

ASEAN plans to work closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other experts to develop a legal framework to meet international standards on nuclear safety, among other issues, he said. It will hold discussions with nuclear weapons states to seek their cooperation in making the region free of such arms, he said. (Additional reporting by Manny Mogato)

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