Nobel laureate wants Tibetans to give up hunger strike

NEW DELHI, May 6 (AFP) - Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, a rights activist from East Timor, Wednesday pressed five Tibetans to give up a hunger strike called to denounce China's rule over their homeland.

Horta said in a statement faxed to the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) here that the five -- the second group of Tibetan hunger strikers -- must give up their protest, and pledged to speak in favour of the Tibetan cause.

"(I will) raise the issue of Tibet wherever I go and will urge the United Nations to act on Tibet before it is too late," Horta said, adding Tibetans longed for "freedom, justice and democracy in Free Tibet."

The five hunger strikers started their protest at an historic observatory in New Delhi after the police broke up an earlier fast by six Tibetans that began on March 10. The police action was marred by the self-immolation of a 50-year-old Tibetan, Thupten Ngodup. Horta, the TYC said, offered his condolence for the death of Ngodup. Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of six million Tibetans, fled to India following a failed anti-China uprising in Tibet in 1959. India is also home to more than 100,000 Tibetan exiles.