(New York Times - Week in Review Desk - USA, July 11, 1999)

By DAVID E. SANGER

IT'S not every day that Jesse Helms and the Beastie Boys find themselves comrades in arms.

About the only thing the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the hip-hop group have in common is contempt for China for its treatment of Tibetans. The Beasties hold concerts to support the Dalai Lama. Senator Helms leads the conservative charge against the Clinton Administration's China policy -- coddling dictators to make a buck, he says -- and inveighs against the World Bank, which he and his allies lump together with the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and other mysterious institutions that often go their own way.

This alliance of convenience came together recently in a remarkable face-off between Washington and the World Bank over a development project so small and out of the way that it would usually attract little notice: A $40 million effort to relocate 58,000 of China's poorest farmers -- they make $60 a year -- to more fertile land in Qinghai province in western China. The problem was that they would be moving into territory the Tibetans consider part of their original homeland, even though most maps show it outside Tibet and the Chinese consider it non-Tibetan land. Critics said the bank was aiding China's effort to dilute the minority Tibetan population -- and doing so in the province that was the birthplace of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet.

And therein lies an unusual tale of Washington lobbying.

In a few weeks the Tibet lobby -- best known for patrons like Richard Gere and Harrison Ford but power-challenged by Washington's usual measures -- mobilized allies on the far left and the far right. In a flash it reversed White House policy, and led the Administration's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, to announce that the United States would try to block the loan. The World Bank emerged bloodied, and agreed to study the issue anew. It was a feat that the city's highly paid power brokers could only admire.

Usually, only the lobbyists with the deepest pockets and the busiest PAC's get that kind of attention. Silicon Valley, source of all those new-economy campaign contributions, won two tremendous victories recently: limiting damages from suits arising from Year 2000 computer bugs, and convincing the Administration to relax export controls on powerful but widely available computers, including sales to China. After years of wrangling, the House finally passed a financial restructuring bill this month that was so hotly contested by banks and brokerages, and for so many years, that many thought Congress would debate it forever to keep the money flowing in from all sides.

But every once in a while the stars align in a way that smaller and far less wealthy groups can score a big victory. It helps if they show pictures of crushing poverty or tell stories of repression and -- most important -- side with politicians who may have ulterior agendas. The Tibetan crowd did all of that and won at least a partial victory.

''This was a culmination of forces that have been gathering steam for years,'' said John Kenneth Knaus, who spent four decades at the Central Intelligence Agency helping the Tibetan resistance fight the Chinese and recently recounted that struggle in a book, ''Orphans of the Cold War'' (Public Affairs, 1999). ''They have always been a very cohesive group, and their story has always had a great appeal in Congress. But this time they got further.''

CHINA occupied Tibet in 1950, and Tibet's political fortunes have waxed and waned in Washington depending on the prevailing mood toward Beijing. China considers it a province, and screams whenever it believes Washington is meddling in its internal affairs. When the 64-year-old Dalai Lama shows up in Washington, he is handled like a chunk of plutonium, meeting the President in diplomatically staged ''drop by'' visits, sitting in the offices of lesser officials.

But if ever the Tibet lobbyists had an opportunity, this was the moment. The accusations of Chinese spying at nuclear laboratories in the United States and the anti-American protests after the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade have left Congressional conservatives looking for a quick, cost-free way to lash out at China. Human rights groups have concluded that the Administration's China policy is one of toothless, token statements.

Onto this battlefield walked the World Bank, whose savvy president, James Wolfensohn, usually sees land mines ahead and saunters around them. But China was pressing for this loan as part of a last series of interest-free deals that end after June 30. The details were rushed. The environmental studies were done once over lightly. ''It was not only politically offensive,'' said Dana Clark, a senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law. ''It was done in violation of the bank's own policies.'' Meanwhile China threatened to end its relations with the bank if the loan was denied -- a step that would give the West less control over Beijing's actions.

Quickly the Office of Tibet, which represents the Dalai Lama, and the International Campaign for Tibet were swinging into action. Members of the Senate were lined up to ask about the program at Mr. Summers'sconfirmation hearing. The Treasury, not looking for a fight at a sensitive time, immediately agreed to oppose the plan. So did Germany. World Bank officials were called to a meeting on Capitol Hill and saw the future.

''When you have a coalition of students in California with body piercings saying the same thing as Jesse Helms,'' one World Bank official said, ''you are on a highway to nowhere.'' On the left and the right, the official said, the message to the bank was simple: ''If you do this, we will kill you.''

Mr. Wolfensohn tried to travel to the region himself, then sent a team to reconfirm that the resettlement of the farmers would be voluntary, and that children would attend schools reflecting their ethnic backgrounds. ''This is the first time most of these children will get a school,'' he said. China, he added, didn't need the bank's money -- but with it, the West would have a voice in what China does in the region.

IN the end, the World Bank's board approved the loan for the resettlement -- in part because it feared the United States was moving on an isolationist path that would only worsen relations with China. But the Chinese won't get the money until an independent review board within the World Bank looks at the project. The Tibetan lobby vows to be back.