By Jason Szep
BANGKOK, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Trade ties, regional security, disaster relief and human rights will likely dominate a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders this week, offering a diplomatic test for host Thailand after embarrassing mishaps at past summits.
Six months after hundreds of anti-government protesters broke through security barriers at a summit at Thailand's resort town of Pattaya, forcing some Asian leaders to flee by helicopter and abruptly ending the meeting, Thailand is taking no chances.
A security force of 18,000 has cordoned off the seaside town of Hua Hin where leaders from the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations begin a series of meetings on Friday, first amongst themselves and then with counterparts from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Their goal is simple: ensure no repeat of the chaotic Pattaya meeting, when half of the leaders were evacuated by helicopter and others effectively imprisoned in their hotels.
Not so simple is the bigger task facing ASEAN and its East Asia Summit grouping: how to stay relevant in a new economic order embodied by the "Group of 20", which anointed itself last month as the pre-eminent forum for global economic coordination.
The 42-year-old ASEAN has over the past decade or so been trying to position its dialogues with other regional powers as an epicentre for economic issues at the heart of emerging Asia.
But that could be overtaken, said David Kiu, an analyst at risk consultancy Eurasia Group, as rival forums such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and Group of 20 industrialised and developing nations take on more prominence.
"That will be something occupying the minds of both ASEAN leaders and the Chinese and Japanese," said Kiu. "It is going to be a very complex issue they are not going to resolve at this summit, but they are going to start addressing it."
RICE SPAT
At least 42 agreements are expected to be signed this week, including the inauguration of an ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand free-trade pact and an intellectual property agreement between ASEAN and China, according to Thailand's Foreign Ministry.
But the fragile global economic recovery is forcing some countries to take a tougher line. Rice-exporter Thailand threatened this week to delay an ASEAN free trade pact unless it can get a "fair deal" on tariffs from the Philippines, the world's biggest buyer of the food staple.
Those differences could derail a Trade in Goods Agreement expected to be signed this weekend, undermining a key plank of an ambitious bid by Southeast Asia and its 540 million people to build an EU-style economic community by 2015.
"There are issues that are cropping like this that are going to be an impediment to the whole process," said Alvin Liew, Southeast Asian economist at Standard Chartered Bank.
"We are emerging out from a very deep global recession, and some countries are faring much better than others."
A Human Rights watchdog will be launched at the ASEAN summit, though critics say it has no teeth and is already discredited by having Myanmar, seen as a serial rights abuser, as part of the mechanism.
The new body, called the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, has no power to punish members and aims to promote rather than protect human rights. It is unlikely to have much influence, for instance, in efforts to free Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi or the estimated 2,000 political prisoners in the country.
Myanmar's generals, however, will argue they are making progress. They allowed Suu Kyi recently to meet with Western diplomats about easing sanctions on the country, after Washington said late last month it was embarking on a new policy of engagement with the junta.
Yangon is also touting elections next year -- its first in nearly two decades -- as a final destination of the junta's "roadmap to democracy".
Myanmar's leaders "will want ASEAN and other countries to back them," said Win Min, an academic and Myanmar analyst from Payap University in Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai.
"The other countries will try to engage rather than criticise Myanmar," he added. (Additional reporting by Martin Petty; Editing by Bill Tarrant)