China accuses Dalai Lama of plotting 'terror'

FIGHTING FIT: Dalai Lama says he wants talks with China to negotiate autonomy, but not outright independence of Tibet.

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Beijing: China has accused the Dalai Lama of plotting "terror" in Tibet and colluding with Uighur separatists in Xinjiang as it escalates a security and propaganda drive to stifle anti-Chinese unrest ahead of the Olympics.

Anti-government protests by Buddhist monks erupted in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, from March 10 and five days later anti-Chinese rioting shook the city, killing a policeman and 18 civilians, burnt or hacked to death, authorities said.

Protests then flared in nearby provinces with large ethnic Tibetan populations, leaving several more people dead.

In Sichuan, Gansu and other troubled provinces, troops continued conspicuously patrolling the streets of Tibetan towns, with schools and Buddhist monasteries under tight guard.

China said on Sunday 94 people have been injured in Tibetan areas in Gansu, almost all of whom are police, according to Xinhua.

Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, has criticised the violence and said he wants talks with China to negotiate autonomy, but not outright independence, for his homeland, which was occupied by Chinese troops from 1950.

But Beijing is intensifying propaganda telling its citizens and the rest of the world that the Dalai Lama, not failings in government policy, caused the trouble and that he wants to ruin Beijing's Olympic Games in August.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily, said on Sunday that the Dalai, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, had never abandoned violence after fleeing China in 1959, following a failed revolt against Beijing.

"The so-called 'peaceful non-violence' of the Dalai clique is an outright lie from start to end," the paper stated.

"In 2008, the Beijing Olympic Games, eagerly awaited by the people of the whole world, will arrive. But the Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence."

The paper earlier accused the Dalai Lama of planning attacks with the aid of violent Uighur separatist groups seeking an independent East Turkestan for their largely Muslim people in northwest China's Xinjiang region.