BEIJING, May 22 (Reuter) - Chinese police have arrested 180 gamblers, prostitutes, pimps and punters in Tibet in a crackdown on gambling and prostitution, the Tibet Daily said in an edition seen

in Beijing on Monday. The 6 1/2-hour swoop through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, had netted 69 gamblers by dawn on May 10, the newspaper said in a front-page article. A total of 111 prostitutes, pimps and customers were taken into custodyby some 250 policemen, it said.

Most of those arrested were from outside Tibet, and included government officials, the newspaper said. It did not say whether the officials were Tibetan or Chinese.

The newspaper ran a picture of one Tibetan escorted by two policemen after he was arrested on charges of forcing eight girls aged between 15 and 19 into prostitution.

Zhao Lianjin, deputy secretary of the Communist Party in Lhasa, said the crackdown was a long-term struggle that could not be accomplished overnight. Gambling and prostitution were virtually

eliminated in the years after the communists came to power in 1949, but have staged a comeback since economic reforms were introduced in the late 1980s.

The Buddhist region of Tibet had been spared such vices until recently.