BANGKOK (AP) — Regional talks dealing with the swelling tide of boat people in Southeast Asia began Friday with a Myanmar official criticizing those who blame his country for causing the crisis, saying "finger pointing" would not help.

Htin Linn, the acting director of Myanmar's Foreign Affairs Ministry, spoke after several officials urged delegates to address the root causes of the problem — a reference to minority Rohingya Muslims who have fled persecution in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar for years — and a top U.N. official called for stateless Rohingya to be granted citizenship.

Asian nations have been beset by growing waves of desperate migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. In the last several weeks alone, at least 3,000 people have been rescued by fishermen or made their way ashore in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Several thousand more are believed to still be at sea after human smugglers abandoned their boats amid a regional crackdown that has unearthed the graves of dozens of people who died while being kept hostage in illegal trafficking camps.

Some are Bangladeshis who left their impoverished homeland in hope of finding jobs abroad. But many are Rohingya who have fled persecution in Myanmar, which has denied them basic rights, confined more than 100,000 to camps and denies them citizenship. There are more than 1 million Rohingya living in the country formerly known as Burma.

Volker Turk, the U.N.'s assistant high commissioner for refugees responsible for protection, said there could be no solution if root causes are not addressed.

"This will require full assumption of responsibility by Myanmar toward all its people. Granting citizenship is the ultimate goal," he said. "In the interim ... recognizing that Myanmar is their own country is urgently required (as well as) access to identity documents and the removal of restrictions on basic freedoms."

Htin Linn shot back in a speech afterward, saying Turk should "be more informed" and casting doubt on whether "the spirit of cooperation is prevailing in the room."

"Finger pointing will not serve any purpose. It will take us nowhere," he said.

Friday's meeting was attended by representatives of 17 countries directly or indirectly affected by the crisis, including the United States and Japan, and officials from international organizations such as the U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration.

The word "Rohingya" did not appear on the invitation, after Myanmar threatened to boycott the talks if it did, and most people who spoke at the beginning of Friday's meeting avoided saying it. Myanmar's government does not recognize Rohingya as an ethnic group, arguing instead they are really Bangladeshis. Bangladesh also does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens.

Southeast Asian governments have largely ignored the issue for years. The problem has recently attracted international attention amid increased media scrutiny as more migrants and refugees pour out of the Bay of Bengal. In many cases, they pay human smugglers thousands of dollars for passage to another country, but are instead held for weeks or months while traffickers extort more money from their families back home. Rights groups say some migrants have been beaten to death.

Human rights groups have urged those involved in the talks to find a better way of saving the people still stranded at sea, and to put pressure on Myanmar to end its repressive policies that drive Rohingya to flee.

The director-general of the International Organization for Migration, William Lacy Swing, said more than 160,000 people have fled into Southeast Asia since 2012, 25,000 of them this year.

"These are large numbers, but this is not an invasion or an inundation. It is something that is entirely manageable if we can come together as a community with the right policies," he said, adding that one of the challenges is changing the way migrants are viewed.

"Now it's a fairly toxic narrative, a fairly negative one," Swing said. But he said many nations were "built on the backs of migrants and with the minds of migrants. We need to ... look upon migrants as opportunities rather than a problem."

That will not be easy. Most nations in the region view the boat people as a burden, and refugees have been ping-ponged back and forth between Southeast Asian nations that have long tried to push them away.

In a turnaround, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed this month to provide Rohingya with shelter for one year. It is unclear what will happen after that, though both countries have called on the international community to help with resettlement and the U.S. has offered to take some in.

Thailand has offered humanitarian help but not shelter. More than 100,000 refugees, mostly from other Myanmar ethnic groups, have been living in Thai border camps for decades, and Thailand says it cannot afford any more.

Speaking at the start of Friday's conference, Thai Foreign Minister Thanasak Patimaprakorn said his country has taken in 600 boat people.

"No country can solve this problem alone ... the influx of irregular migrants in the Indian Ocean has reached an alarming level," Thanasak said. "While we are trying to help those in need, we must stop the outflow of irregular migrants and combat transnational crime and destroy their networks."

Thanasak said Bangkok has agreed to allow the U.S. military to operate flights out of Thailand to search for migrants stuck on boats. That came one week after Washington put in a request to do so. It is unclear what caused the delay, but Thanasak said the Americans must cooperate with a center set up under the Thai air force.

So far U.S. Navy flights have been operating out of Subang, Malaysia, while the U.S. waited for permission from Thailand.

Anne C. Richard, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said "we strongly believe we have to save lives urgently. We have to develop better ways of discussing and meeting on these issues and taking action when people are setting to sea in boats."

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Associated Press writers Todd Pitman in Bangkok and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.