KATHMANDU, Mar 18 (Reuter) - Nepali police arrested about 200 human rights activists and Tibetan refugees on Monday, aborting their plans for a peace march to the Chinese embassy, officials said.

The march was organised by the Nepal section of London-based Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog, as part of its protest against alleged violations of human rights in China, notably the use of capital punishment there.

"They included nuns and monks," said an official of the representative office of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's temporal and religious leader, who lives in exile in India along with about 100,000 Tibetans.

"Ours was not an activity about Tibet," said Uttam Pudasaini, an Amnesty spokesman. "We wanted to proceed to the Chinese embassy and submit a memorandum on human rights violation in China," he told Reuters.

The police action came amid reports that Nepal's giant northern neighbour was unhappy with Kathmandu for failing to stop protests by the 12,000 Tibetan refugees living in the Himalayan kingdom.

The Tibetans fled their homeland after the Chinese army marched into Tibet's capital Lhasa in 1959.

Kathmandu says it will not "permit its soil to be used against its neighbour."