The essentially political orientation of the ASEAN-EU dialogue became more pronounced with the initiation in 1995 of the ASEAN-EU Senior Officials Meeting, a forum of high-level diplomats that usually precedes the AEMM by a few months. In the AEMM, East Timor and Myanmar became contentious issues between the two sides. On each issue, the EU's policy was driven by one or two member-states- in the case of Eas tTimor, by Portugal, and in that of Myanmar, by the United Kingdom and Denmark- with some others chafing at the hard line being pursued and seeking more pragmatic approaches. On Myanmar, as early as 1994, the AEMM joint statement indicated the different approaches of the two sides but diplomatically highlighted the complementary relationship between ASEAN's "constructive engagement" and the EU's "critical dialogue". After Myanmar entered ASEAN in 1997, the joint statements issued by the AEMM· referred to discussions on the situation in that country and its place in ASEAN-EU relations, sometimes explicitly, at other times obliquely in formulations like "political dialogue through frank discussions of sensitive issues of common concern", a reference not just to Myanmar but to issues of human rights in general