From: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, September 10, 1995

Agence France Presse

September 08, 1995 20:41 Eastern Time

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:

China's occupation of Tibet is "unacceptable," US Senator Jesse Helms declared Thursday, saying the United States should support Tibetans' drive to determine their own political destiny.

In a statement prepared for Senate's East Asian subcommittee, Helms, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the US government should either support Tibetans or have "Congress ... push them into doing so." Helms' comments came as the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, was visiting the United States. He is to visit Washington next week.

"We should throw our support behind the Dalai Lama," Helms said. The North Carolina Republican said the Dalai Lama's non-violent approach to change "makes a lot more sense than anything the Communist Chinese have ever espoused."

China annexed Tibet in 1951 and the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India eight years later after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He currently leads a government in exile in Dharamsala, in northern India.

Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming, chairman of the subcommittee that held the hearing on Tibet Thursday, said Tibetans had endured mass killings, torture and imprisonment of religious and political leaders and destruction of their culture at the hands of the Chinese.

Also testifying before the committee was US actor Harrison Ford, who urged the United States to appoint an envoy to Tibet and meet with the Dalai Lama.

"It is about the survival of a people who seek only to democratically determine their own government, to have the freedome to practice their own religtion without interference and to bring up their children in a safe environment," Ford said.

But both the State Department and the White House have been downplaying the visit and the likelihood of any formal meetings between the Dalai Lama and administration officials, which would irritate Beijing.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner was to visit Houston, Boston, and Washington before leaving September 14.

The Dalai Lama was scheduled to meet with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and with members of the House International Relations Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He was also expected to meet with administration officials, according to a spokesman, but the details of such discussions were not known.

He has met twice with Clinton and once with his predecessor in the White House, former president George Bush. Beijing protested those visits.