Southeast Asian defence ministers are to hold inaugural talks in Kuala Lumpur this week in an initiative to shed old tensions and move towards greater security cooperation.

Regional officials say that tomorrow's meeting Asean defence ministers - minus the bloc's black sheep Burma which has bowed out - will be a milestone in security cooperation.

"We must move beyond the norm of Asean, looking at Asean as an economic or social and cultural (entity), to something that covers security," Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters recently.

The meeting "shows that Asean has reached a new level of maturity, good will and understanding, which is very positive," he said.

While Asean ministers in other portfolios meet regularly, the grouping has shied away from putting defence cooperation formally on its agenda.

Taboo topic once

That reluctance is a legacy of Asean's formation in 1967 during the Cold War era with its tensions over communism, nationalist movements and leadership struggles in regional nations.

"At one time (security) was a taboo topic. The fact that the meeting is taking place shows there is a different perception now," said a Malaysian defence ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity.

The ministers' meeting is part of efforts to create an Asean Security Community, which the grouping says is not a defence pact, but a vision for more political and security cooperation.

It is also expected to boost the grouping's muscle at the Asean Regional Forum, a security gathering that has been dominated in recent years by the participation of heavyweights such as the United States.

Officials said Asean was beginning to accept it had to coordinate security efforts by including a defence ministers' meeting in its formal structures.

The move is "a strategic shift in the perception of defence issues from being a sensitive or even provocative subject into a legitimate realm of regional dialogue and cooperation," said MC Abad, the spokesperson for Asean's secretary-general.

The gathering is expected to broadly tackle regional security cooperation, but officials say not to expect many specific pronouncements at this early stage.

"Anybody can raise anything, but as far as the current draft agenda is concerned, it's more general topics, like an exchange of views on the regional security environment, as well as briefing each other on national security in each member state," said Abad.

The ministers will be "getting to know each other, as they say, and they'll probably talk about the guiding objectives and principles and modalities of this new body," he told AFP .

Old suspicions

Even so, analysts say it will be a useful forum for helping the member countries to ditch old suspicions.

"There are some residual concerns between and maybe among a few neighbouring states," said Stephen Leong of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.

"Coming together would be a positive step to discuss issues and to express whatever concerns they might have and then to assure one another," he said.

Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Ministers from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have confirmed their attendance, while Brunei and Vietnam are sending deputy ministers, according to Malaysian officials.

Burma, which has been under intense pressure from the grouping over its slow pace of democratic reforms, has said it has other commitments and cannot attend.