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Tibet officials vow tight security for Games torch

By Chris Buckley and Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will impose strict security on the Olympic Games torch relay through restive Tibet to Mount Everest, as the government seeks to prevent any protests upsetting the symbolic display of national unity.

The torch to light the flame of the 2008 Games will be lit in Greece on Monday and reach the host city Beijing on March 31 to start a relay that passes through a number of countries.

As the date approaches, Beijing has stepped up its drive to rally support for the Games in the face of international attention on Tibet and pin the blame for unrest on the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader.

"The political monk's statement of supporting the Beijing Olympic Games has been proven a lie; his followers boycotted the torch relay and resorted to violence in Lhasa and elsewhere," the official Xinhua news agency said of the Dalai Lama.

"But their plot to sabotage the Beijing event is doomed to fail," it said.

China alleges the Dalai Lama conspired to wreck the country's Olympics and masterminded the wave of protests that began with peaceful rallies in Tibet's capital Lhasa on March 10, the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Five days later, the marches erupted into a riot in Lhasa that China says killed 19. Since then, anti-government demonstrations have flared throughout ethnic Tibetan parts of China, leading to violence.

Tibetan groups say as many as 100 have died in the unrest. The government restricts foreign journalists from the area, making independent verification of the reports difficult.

The Dalai Lama rejects China's claim that he is behind the protests and says he does not oppose Beijing's Games.

When the Olympic flame arrives in Beijing on March 31, before embarking on its journey around the world, a second torch will be lit and taken to Tibet for an attempt to take it to the top of Everest, at 8,848 meters (29,030 ft) above sea level, on a day in May when the weather looks best.

But the anti-government turmoil that has shaken Tibet threatens to overshadow the torch's journey to the world's highest peak.

A Tibet sports official told a newspaper on Monday that the Everest climb was certain to go ahead under strict security.

"The region's torch relay leadership team will closely coordinate and cooperate with all concerned units, taking very seriously and cooperating with security and protection work, and strictly guarding against disturbances and sabotage by the Dalai clique," the unnamed official told the state-run Tibet Daily.

The official said candidates to carry the torch through Tibet have been chosen, and the route and schedule have been set.

"ONLY HOPE"

In a departure from the government line, Bao Tong, the most senior Chinese official ousted over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, said the Dalai Lama was the "only Tibetan leader with the hope of presiding over a reconciliation agreement".

"Only if the central (government) sits down for dialogue with the Dalai Lama and shows great wisdom, great decisiveness and great boldness of vision, the Lhasa incident can be handled well," Bao wrote in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

China has invested huge amounts of money and political capital to make the 2008 Summer Olympics a showpiece of the country's prosperity and confidence. It has warned critics and protesters not to disrupt the event.

But two overseas groups reported ongoing protests in Tibetan enclaves of China over the weekend, contradicting government claims that the areas have been quiet since last Thursday.

The Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said hundreds of Tibetans staged a peaceful protest in Malho county of Qinghai following a religious ceremony on Saturday. Sunday also saw protests in the province, it said.

Monks and lay people held a march in the Gansu area of Luqu, chanting slogans for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet, the Free Tibet Campaign reported, citing a witness.

Outside of China, an eruption of international criticism over Beijing's policies in Tibet is likely to bring demonstrators out in force on many stops of the torch relay.

Tibetan independence activists plan to stage protests in the Greek town of Olympia on Monday, as hundreds of police patrol the streets of the small town for fear of any disruptions to the widely televised torch lighting ceremony and start of the relay.

Overseas advocates of Tibetan independence who have denounced China's security crackdown have said they will seek to protest against the Olympics, and especially against the torch relay through the troubled region.

China has said advocates of Tibetan independence and Western news reports have given a distorted presentation of the unrest, and accused them of ignoring the ugly violence in Lhasa and vilifying Beijing's efforts to bring prosperity to Tibet.

(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim; editing by Ken Wills and Alex Richardson)