China vows to tighten security in Tibet

BEIJING, May 21 (Reuters) China's top official in Tibet has vowed to tighten security ahead of a Communist Party meeting in the autumn and the 2008 Beijing Olympics to ensure the Himalayan region remains firmly under Communist control.

In a speech to about 600 party members in regional capital Lhasa on Friday, Zhang Qingli, Tibet's Communist Party secretary, claimed a ''transitional victory'' over the influence of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

''We must have a more vigorous will to fight, a more tenacious style and do a more solid job of uniting and leading the region's various ethnic groups and throwing ourselves into the struggle against splittism,'' the official Tibet Daily today quoted Zhang as saying.

''From beginning to end... we must deepen patriotic education at temples, comprehensively expose and denounce the Dalai Lama clique's political reactionary nature and religious hypocrisy,'' Zhang said in a speech carried by Xinhuanet and other Web sites.

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Communist rule, says he wants greater autonomy, not independence, for his predominantly Buddhist homeland.

China and the Dalai Lama's envoys have been engaged in painfully slow dialogue since 2002, which analysts say is partly driven by fears that if the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize dies in exile, it could lead to radicalisation of Tibetan youth and trouble in his homeland.

But hawks like Zhang appear convinced they have the upper hand and regularly denounce the Dalai Lama for trying to split Tibet from the Chinese ''motherland''.

Zhang pledged to maintain stability to ensure the success of the 17th Communist Party Congress later this year and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

President Hu Jintao is expected to promote his political allies and further consolidate power at the congress.

Drawing parallels with the popular revolutions that toppled harsh regimes in post-Soviet states, Zhang said Tibet was being targeted by subversive foreign forces seeking to challenge Chinese control.

''The fundamental objective of international hostiles forces ... is to change Tibet's (political) colour,'' Zhang said.

''The (mandate of) heaven in Tibet will never change. The Dalai Lama clique's pipe dream (of independence) will never prevail... the country's rivers and mountains will remain red,'' he said, referring to the Communist Party's symbolic colour.

Khedroob Thondup, a nephew of the Dalai Lama, said Zhang's statements on the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan issue ''provoke every sense of human dignity''.

''In the past year, numerous attacks on the Dalai Lama by the leadership in Tibet proves Beijing's continued failure to colonise Tibet and its insecurity to deal with the Tibetan issue,'' Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, told Reuters.

''The one person with the key to the Tibetan issue is the Dalai Lama... Beijing should allow the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet and allow Tibetans to realise their own destiny.'' REUTERS SKB KP1729