By Ruth Youngblood

BEIJING, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- China defended Monday its refusal to grant visas to groups advocating Tibetan independence for a giant forum attached to the U.N. World Conference on Women.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Chen Jian told a briefing other countries opposed groups in who want to split China. The comment coincided with escalating fears among human rights groups deemed hostile to China that their delegates are the victims of intentional bureaucratic delays by the communist government to limit the number of participants at the 10-day Non-Governmental Organizations Forum starting Sept. 30 four days ahead of the conference.

Chinese organizers denied thousands of women would be effectively barred by red tape calculated to hold up their visas. "It's just not true," said a spokeswoman for the NGO Forum Committee. "Everyone who registered and has a hotel confirmation will receive a visa."

China managed to have three out of five Tibetan women's organizations excluded from the forum during the final meeting of the U.N. Economic Social Council in July held in Geneva. They included the U.S.-based International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, the U.S.-based Tibetan Rights Campaign and the Tibetan Women's Organization in Switzerland.

Beijing maintains Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the dalai lama, and his supporters are trying to split China. A sweeping security crackdown was launched in the run-up to Beijing's celebrations next month marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1950 and crushed an uprising nine years later, forcing the dalai lama into exile in northern India.

Earlier this month the China Organizing Committee for the women's conference announced it was spending $500,000 to send hotel confirmation slips by express mail around the world. But a representative of the U.N. Development Fund for Women said the biggest problem now appears to be that delegates registered for the forum with hotel reservations are being told by Chinese embassies their names are not on the database for visas.

The spokeswoman said the situation was being immediately addressed by updating the lists and informing embassies to grant the visas. "It's not part of a campaign to keep out certain groups," she said. "Women in several different countries, not just the United States, have run into the same situation. We hope to have it all straightened out in a couple days."

Thirty-six thousand women have registered for the forum, which the Chinese have moved to the town of Hairou, a 90-minute drive from the conference venue in Beijing. There are only accommodations for 16,000 in the rural community and the Chinese said the others will stay in Beijing hotels and be shuttled back and forth each day by buses. While Beijing insists the forum site was switched from the Worker's Stadium because of structural problems, many NGOs say it was moved outside the capital so that participants could be better controlled. China's government made a commitment to unrestricted forum attendance when U.N. officials acquiesced and allowed the meeting to be moved to Huairou.