Myanmar parades its once-isolated capital to international leaders this weekend, hosting a landmark summit of Southeast Asia's regional bloc as reforms see the country strut onto the world stage.

The long-cloistered country's debut as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) presents the diplomatic newcomer with a delicate challenge amid soaring maritime tensions between members Vietnam and the Philippines and an increasingly assertive China.

Armed pirates boarded a Singapore-managed oil tanker in the Strait of Malacca, kidnapping three Indonesian crew and stealing some of the vessel's shipment of diesel fuel, the International Maritime Bureau said Wednesday.

The attack occurred early Tuesday off Malaysia's west coast, said Noel Choong, head of IMB's Kuala Lumpur-based piracy reporting center. The diesel oil tanker was believed to be en route to Myanmar.

Fighting between the military and ethnic minority rebels in northern Myanmar has left at least 22 people dead this month, the army said Sunday, dimming hopes of a nationwide peace deal.

Bloodshed in the state of Kachin, the scene of the last major active civil war in the former junta-ruled country, has uprooted tens of thousands of people and tempered optimism about sweeping political reforms.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. urged Myanmar on Thursday to intervene to stop communal violence there and protect humanitarian workers in the volatile western state of Rakhine.

Myanmar, formerly called Burma, has been shaken by religious unrest in recent years with at least 250 people killed in Buddhist-Muslim clashes since 2012.

Myanmar's opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi warned on Friday that her country, despite a spate of reforms hailed by the international community, "is not yet a democracy."

Speaking in Berlin to accept a human rights award, she said the country formerly called Burma still needs a democratic constitution, true national reconciliation and a change of mindset among its ex-military rulers.

Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said on a trip to Germany Thursday that she hoped her country could also overcome its internal divisions amid deadly Buddhist-Muslim strife.

Suu Kyi, 68, said ahead of her first face-to-face talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Myanmar sought the support of "all countries that believe in democracy" as it makes it transition from iron-fisted military rule.

Myanmar census takers made their final rounds Thursday in the country's first population tally in three decades, which triggered international concern over a refusal to recognize the stateless Rohingya.

More than 10 million households have taken part in the survey, according to official figures for the first 10 days of the 12-day exercise, which is designed to plug widespread information gaps in the poverty-stricken nation.

Maoist rebels killed three soldiers guarding polling officials in central India on Wednesday, highlighting security concerns in the world's biggest elections as the second phase of voting got under way.

The rebels staged the attack in Chhattisgarh state in the country's insurgency-racked center one day before polling is held there, as voters in the restive northeast of the country cast their ballots.

Myanmar promised Wednesday to protect international aid groups targeted by Buddhist mobs in a violence-torn western region, after a chorus of concern from foreign governments and the United Nations.

Following an unusually swift investigation, Myanmar's reformist government conceded it had been slow to respond to unrest that forced humanitarian workers to flee Rakhine state last month, leaving thousands facing looming food and water shortages.

A Myanmar reporter has been handed a one year prison term for trying to interview an education official, his lawyer said Tuesday, in the latest prosecution to raise fears over press freedom in the former junta-run nation.

Zaw Pe, a journalist for the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) news website, was convicted of trespassing and "disturbing a civil servant" by a court in the central town of Magway on Monday, lawyer Thein Tun told Agence France Presse.