HELSINKI: Ending months of controversy, European Union and East Asian leaders finalised early this week plans to expand their 10-year-old ASEM club to include India and Pakistan.

Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, chairing an ASEM summit in Helsinki, said the membership of the two South Asian countries would strengthen the Asia-Europe dialogue, launched in Bangkok in 1996.

Mongolia and the secretariat of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) will also be joining the dialogue forum immediately.

In addition, the EU wants Bulgaria and Romania to become ASEM members once they join the Union in either 2007 or 2008.

Becoming ASEM members is a boost for both Indian and Pakistani efforts to forge stronger links with the EU.

Both countries have so far worked only through bilateral channels with the EU, with Islamabad trying hard to catch up with India’s rapidly-growing ties with Europe.

An EU-India summit will be held in Helsinki in mid-October. No such high-level meetings are held between the EU and Pakistan, with institutional links remaining at the level of foreign ministers.

However, President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to EU headquarters in Brussels this week is a significant sign of an upgrade in EU-Pakistan relations.

EU governments continue to laud Musharraf’s role in the so-called war on terror. But there is also growing concern in Europe at the upsurge in fighting between Nato forces and the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

The Pakistani president is likely to be questioned by EU officials on the Taliban’s activities and his efforts to stop fighters from crossing the border into Afghanistan.

The questioning is likely to be especially tough given US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s comments on Monday that the Taliban had come back ‘somewhat more organised and somewhat more capable than would have expected’.

Rice was speaking two days after the top British commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, said the fighting between Nato forces and the Taliban in recent weeks had been ‘extraordinarily intense’.

EU officials are also expected to ask for more details on the recent signature of a peace agreement between Islamabad and pro-Taliban militants aimed at ending years of violent unrest on the Pakistani side of the porous border with Afghanistan.

ASEM membership for Pakistan and India follows years of often heated discussions among European and Asian governments on the issue.

The EU has long argued that India and Pakistan should be part of the ASEM to make the forum truly representative of Asia.

But several Asian countries had earlier opposed the move, arguing that extending ASEM would make the already large grouping even more unwieldy. ASEM is currently comprised of the 25 EU member states and 13 Asian countries.

There was also concern that India and Pakistan would bring their bilateral quarrels, including over Kashmir, into the forum.

Analysts said southeast Asian countries finally changed their mind because of concern at China’s increasingly strong role both in ASEM and in Asia.

“Southeast Asians believe that getting India into ASEM will act as a sort of counter-weight to China,” said an analyst.

Joining ASEM may be politically prestigious but the forum has failed to make much of an impact on the international stage.

While trade and investment ties between Asia and Europe are booming — together ASEM members represent 50 per cent of global GDP and 60 per cent of world trade — political and diplomatic relations between the two regions are lagging behind big business.

A report commissioned by the Japanese and Finnish foreign ministries, which was the basis for leaders’ discussions in Helsinki, lays bare the gaps in the relationship.

While they have been broad-ranging, Asia-Europe ties have not been deep, says the report, adding: “The dialogue process has...stayed at information-sharing level and has not moved into substantive cooperation.”

The reasons for this lacklustre performance are not hard to find.

Many Asian countries expected the EU to become a powerful global player but last year’s failure of the EU constitution, coupled with the bloc’s continuing economic trials, have tarnished Europe’s international reputation.

While European companies and exporters continue to be attracted by Asia’s red-hot markets, the bloc’s leaders have been too distracted by their internal problems and the focus on the immediate neighbourhood to really concentrate on Asia.

In addition, while Europe is currently in ‘reflection mode’ over its future, high-growth Asian economies are engaged in a dizzying race to forge stronger inter-regional trade and political bonds, often either brokered by China or centring around it.

The two sides have also often clashed on human rights — and especially on how best to deal with the generals in Myanmar.

After months of squabbling, EU governments agreed two years ago to open the ASEM forum to Myanmar, a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), whose other participants are in ASEM.

The EU is using the ASEM summit to press Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Nyan Win to improve human rights and implement democratic reforms.

A senior Finnish diplomat, Markus Lyra, said EU governments had waived the ban on visits to Europe by the country’s officials in order to press home the bloc’s distaste for the ruling military junta.

“We are using both sanctions and dialogue to encourage and pressure Myanmar to start real reforms,” said Lyra.

Current Asian members include Japan, China and South Korea plus the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean): Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In addition to the 25 EU states, the European Commission is also member of ASEM.