By William Horsley BBC, Hanoi

The European delegations say they will use the meeting to protest against the lack of democratic reforms by the military government in Burma.

The Asem meeting is designed to ease tensions and build bridges.

China, Japan and South Korea, and the member-states of both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the European Union are taking part.

But the political dialogue in Asem is now stalled over the issue of Burma, and EU foreign ministers have said their countries will use this event to confront Burma again.

The Europeans insist that Burma's military government must release the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and accept other democratic reforms, or face stricter European sanctions aimed at punishing the regime.

Some EU states wanted to exclude Burma completely from this meeting, the first since the enlargement of both Asean and the EU.

But the Asean countries countered by saying that all three of their new members, Burma, Laos and Cambodia, must be included, or the EU's 10 new members must be excluded as well.

The result was an uneasy deal, whereby Burma would attend but only with a lower-level delegation, led by the newly-appointed foreign minister, Nyan Win.

There will be other talking-points. For one, the Chinese government will again be pressing its demands for the lifting of the EU's embargo on arms exports to China, in place since the army's suppession of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest 15 years ago.

The agenda covers a range of topics from free trade to co-operation against terrorism.

But the summit now risks developing into a clash of political values between Asia and Europe over Burma, where harsh sentences for peaceful protests and other human rights abuses were recently condemned in a report by experts of the United Nations.