By Leslie Koh

IF ASEAN were a class in school, it would probably get a C for a crucial test of its abilities: handling Myanmar in the wake of the cyclone disaster.

The grading comes from the class leader, Singapore, which has chaired the regional grouping for the past year.

It helped facilitate the creation of independent assessment teams, which spread out across the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta to check the extent of the damage. They found that villagers were recovering better than initially thought.

'We feared the worst initially but it turned out not to be an F grading,' Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters this week.

'Certainly not an A or B, but I would say on the whole, with Asean's assistance, and Asean taking the lead in bringing humanitarian assistance into Myanmar, we could give ourselves a C grading.'

Mr Yeo did not grade Asean's overall performance under Singapore's chairmanship, but Myanmar-related issues loomed large in the past year.

When the Republic took over the rotating Asean chair last August, the biggest goals then were speeding up integration, ratifying a charter to establish the grouping as a legal body, and laying out common rules and goals on issues such as security and human rights.

Ultimately, however, one country came to dominate the agenda.

Myanmar's crackdown on street protests last September and the cyclone in May put Asean through the hardest test: How to keep that fine balance between a longstanding principle of non-interference in member nations' domestic affairs, and yet not come across as a pushover.

Myanmar promises to continue to top the agenda over the next few days, as Asean leaders meet for the 41st Asean Ministerial Meeting at the Shangri-La hotel here and discuss post-cyclone recovery efforts, among other things.

One of the biggest events in Asean's annual diary, it started yesterday with meetings of Asean senior officials, and ends next Thursday with the Asean Regional Forum.

Singapore will hand the chair to Thailand, as foreign ministers and top officials from the region and beyond thrash out outstanding issues, such as the ratifying of the Asean Charter, and grab the opportunity to work out bilateral deals.

Amid continuing criticism of Asean's validity and doubts cast about its aim to form a single market by 2015, Mr Yeo defended the bloc's lofty goals when he spoke to reporters ahead of the summit earlier this week.

All the member countries benefited from a strong Asean, he said. Even Myanmar had shown that it wanted to remain a member of the 'Asean family' - despite being condemned by the bloc last year for its violent crackdown on anti-government street protests in Yangon.

Said Mr Yeo: 'Even though they know that whenever they come, they get an earful from the other family members, they still turn up and they do not want to be excluded. That itself is a good sign.'

While some countries want Asean to take a stronger line on Myanmar, many back the bloc's softer stance of continuing engagement.

Senior research fellow Yeo Lay Hwee at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs believes Asean had managed to keep the fine balance in handling the Yangon crackdown and cyclone disaster, despite wide criticism.

'Singapore has done fairly well as the chair of Asean under rather difficult circumstances,' she said.