China "furious" at Dalai Lama's U.S. award

BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed fury on Tuesday that the United States is to honor the Dalai Lama with an award and warned that the activities of his supporters were increasing in Chinese-controlled Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since staging a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, is to receive the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday after being hosted at the White House by President George W. Bush.

"We are furious," Tibet's Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world."

China, which views the Dalai Lama as a separatist and a traitor, pulled out of a meeting this week at which world powers were to discuss Iran in protest at the U.S. plan to honor him.

China has also cancelled an annual human rights dialogue with Germany to show is displeasure over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's September meeting with the Dalai Lama.

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Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China had expressed its "resolute opposition" to the award.

"China has solemnly demanded the United States cancel the above-mentioned and extremely wrongful arrangement," Yang told reporters on the sidelines of the 17th Communist Party Congress.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that if the decision to honor the Dalai Lama was not reversed it would have an "extremely serious impact" on bilateral relations.

China had pulled out of the meeting on Iran for "technical reasons", he told a news conference.

China's rhetoric against the Dalai Lama, whom Tibetan Buddhists consider their spiritual leader, has been increasing in line with his accolades abroad, even though the government and the Dalai's envoys are engaged in a tentative dialogue process.

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Tibet officials said the dialogue was not going well.

"Although we have undergone a lot of contacts and talks, the Dalai Lama has consistently supported Tibetan independence," said Qiangba Puncog, Tibet's governor.

"Under these circumstances, even though we keep the doors for contact open, there cannot be major development as long as the problem is not resolved."

The Dalai Lama has said he supports a "middle way" policy that advocates autonomy for Tibet within China, but Qiangba Puncog said China believed he still supported independence and warmed that separatist activities in the region were increasing.

"He (the Dalai Lama) should resolutely abandon his Tibetan independence stance and activities," Qiangba Puncog said. "But in my opinion, some of those activities are actually escalating and setting a lot of obstacles for further progress."

At least two Communist Party members in Tibet have been expelled recently for alleged disloyalty to China, according to an internal Party memo.

Earlier this year, an ethnic Tibetan in the western province of Sichuan addressed a crowd on the need for greater religious freedom and for the Dalai Lama to be allowed to return. The man, Runggye Adak, has been charged with subversion, a Hong Kong-based human rights group has said.

Rights groups also say several Tibetan boys were detained in the northwestern province of Gansu last month after graffiti calling for the Dalai Lama's return was found scribbled on walls, a sign of his residual influence throughout ethnic Tibetan regions of China.

Four of the boys, all 15, were still in detention. Police had used electric prods on them and were demanding payment for their release, Amnesty International said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Guo Shipeng)