Beijing, September 5. According to UPI correspondent in Beijing: China is spending more on the protection of Tibet's cultural relics, which it claims were damaged by Tibetan carelessness, not by Chinese soldiers, the offical media said Monday. "The Tibetans were not so conscious about protecting cultural relics," Sodnam Wangdui, director of the Tibetan Cultural Relics Administration Committee, told the China Daily. "Unlike other parts of the country, Tibet gets a big chunk of its funding from the central government, it added. But the Dalai Lama's Representative (New Delhi), Jampal Chosang, protested Beijing's renovations as mere cosmetic. "This doesn't mean our children can learn their own language or monks can study in their temples," he said. In '87, Buchung Tsering, a vice-chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region Government, told former German Premier Helmut Kohl in Lhasa that there were 2700 temples and monasteries in '59, but only 550 by '66, after the quelling of the Dalai Lama's uprising and introducti

on of democratic reforms. (EuroTibet News N·2)