The Chinese list of 56 tibetan prisoners was delivered, only after President Clinton withdrew human rights conditions attached to Sino-US trade. Last year October, US Government presented 108 tibetan (prisoner) names for information, but in March and April this year Chinese officials publicly ridiculed the US list. But now it confirmed over half the names presented by the US government. US Secretay of State Warren Christopher had raised the list twice with Qian Qichen, his Chinese counterpart, once in Paris in January and again during his Beijing visit in March, this year, but both times he received no response.

"I don't know where they get the name list from," Raide, the top Tibetan official said repeatedly at a news conference in Beijing in March, according to the news agency PTI. "When western personalities have given such name lists to us, they themself could not tell us where the information came from, said Shen Guofang, spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, on April 19th. Shen spoke of "problems" in the list "not without ridicule", according to the Ta kung Pao, a pro-Chinese paper in Hong Kong which described the "so called list presented by Christopher" as "fabricated".

Amongst those "unidentified" in the Chinese list were Damchoe Pemo, whose arrest (and subsequent release) was confirmed by Jiang Enzhu, China's Vice Mininster for Foreign Affairs, in response to a demarche by the Belgian Ambasador to Beijing on Oct. 29, '93. Also marked "cannot be found" were well-known radio presenter and comedian Menlha Gyab, and Samdrup Tsering, arrested June 93 from Amdo (Qinghai) province, still known to be in prison. The US list applied only to arrest in the first 8 months of 93 and represents about 30% of the estimated 3400 political prisoners in Lhasa. (EuroTibet News N·1)