The Asean charter establishes the group as a legal entity, creating permanent representation for members at its secretariat in Jakarta and committing heads of state to meetings twice a year. Members also adopted a blueprint for economic reforms designed to create a European-style economic community by 2015, with free-flowing goods, services, investment and skilled labor.

"It's still a milestone," said Mari Pangestu, trade minister of Indonesia, Asean's largest and most populous member, in an interview. "It's a total radical change. We've never had a blueprint before."

Pointing to Asean's track record of lofty targets and pedestrian achievements, economists and analysts have voiced skepticism in the group's ability to follow Europe's lead given the widely divergent levels of development among its 10 members - with rich Singapore at one end and impoverished Laos at the other.

"The disparities are still quite big," said Chua Hak Bin, an economist at Citigroup in Singapore. "Don't even talk about a single currency. It's so far away."

The squabbling over Myanmar here this week has only underscored the disparate levels of political maturity and development that exist between Asean's older and newer members.

If nothing else, the meeting has elucidated where the group's members stand on Myanmar.

Asean's newer members, poor and ruled by autocratic regimes - Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam - empathize with Myanmar's ruling junta and oppose efforts to press them to tolerate political dissent. Analysts said these countries feared that any stronger action by Asean on Myanmar might set an unwelcome precedent.

These three nations helped Myanmar block plans by Singapore to have the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, deliver a briefing on the country's situation to the East Asia meeting Wednesday, which will include leaders from Asean, China, Japan, South Korea and India.

But Asean's original members, more developed and relatively more democratic - Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines among them - now see Myanmar as a diplomatic embarrassment that needs to be handled through careful pressure and persuasion. They support continued negotiation through the UN to encourage Myanmar to seek reconciliation with the opposition, the release of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and more rapid progress towards democracy.

Sitting on the fence is Thailand, which has been under military rule since a coup last year. Thailand's military leaders have close professional ties with their counterparts in Myanmar, and Thailand depends on Burmese natural gas for much of its electricity.

Thailand also relies on Myanmar's junta to control the flow of narcotics, refugees and migrants into Thailand.

But like other older Asean members, Thai officials also recognize how Myanmar has become an obstacle to the development of Asean's international stature. More importantly, it has become evident that the flow of drugs and Burmese migrants into Thailand has grown worse recently.

All of Asean's members agree that sanctions like those imposed by the United States and Europe would only serve to further isolate Myanmar and reduce what little leverage they have over the junta.

But the new charter, critics said, offers little in the way of new mechanisms to encourage better behavior from the junta. The version signed on Tuesday omits what the critics say were mechanisms to enforce compliance in earlier versions. The final charter reaffirms Asean's longstanding policy of non-interference in members' internal affairs and declares that "decision-making in Asean shall be based on consultation and consensus."

The charter resolves to create an Asean human rights body but has no provisions for enforcing compliance with any human rights standard.

"They're more into rhetoric than real action," said Sinapan Samydorai, president of the Think Center, a nongovernmental organization in Singapore. "They can talk about human rights, but they can't enforce it."

It is clear that Asean's failure to confront the situation in Myanmar has become a liability. On Monday, the U.S. trade representative, Susan Schwab, warned that the situation in Myanmar was holding up progress towards a U.S.-Asean free trade agreement. And President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines read a statement to her fellow heads of state Monday night warning that unless Myanmar committed itself to democratic reforms and released Aung San Suu Kyi, her country's Congress was unlikely to ratify the charter, essentially vetoing it.

Even the economic blueprint may disappoint those hoping for more determined and immediate economic integration.

The document establishes timelines to carry out a variety of reforms, including the elimination of nontariff barriers and other restrictions on trade in services. Progress will be monitored by the Asean secretariat, which will issue scorecards. But the blueprint falls short of establishing the customs union many businesses in the region have been hoping for. Nor does it appear to outline any consequences for failing to meet the timelines.

Moreover, the charter includes an "Asean Minus X" provision that allows members to opt out of economic commitments if they can win consensual agreement from other members.

To Asean's critics, therefore, the charter looks less like a newly unified Asean than the Asean of old.

"It's not the giant step forward that Asean would like the rest of the world to believe," said Thitinan.