Published by: World Tibet Network News 96/04/03 24:00 GMT

BEIJING, April 4 (UPI) -- A New Zealand tourist was expelled from Tibet for falsely claiming a bomb exploded in the Tibetan capital's main square and hundreds of soldiers were rushing to the scene, reports said Wednesday.

"Freedom of speech should not overstep the boundaries of state security," a security official was quoted as telling the official Xinhua news agency.

Guy Cotter, a mountaineer, was walking near the famed Potala Palace Sept. 2 during the 30th anniversary festivities marking the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

People of different ethnic groups, including Chinese, "were singing and dancing," according to Xinhua's account.

When Cotter returned to his hotel, he "told the press that hundreds of soldiers were hurrying to the square where a bomb exploded on that day and that he left because he couldn't stand to see 'the coming massacre,'" Xinhua said.

Cotter was forced to leave China seven days later, "after confessing to having spread rumors," Xinhua said.

The official version emerged amid warnings of fresh attempts by the dalai lama to split the troubled Himalayan region from China and threats by government officials of a new crackdown.

Beijing has regularly accused the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, of fomenting an independence movement since he fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

"Spreading rumors is an old trick often used by separatists," the security official said.

The expulsion triggered a probe by the Tibet Information Network, which reported Cotter merely tried to send a fax to his wife in which he mentioned he heard a bomb explode near his hotel, the Lhasa Holiday Inn.

The fax was intercepted electronically by Chinese police, the London- based monitoring organization said.

The 34-year-old Cotter had arrived in Lhasa to guide a group of New Zealand tourists on an approved trip to climb Mount Cho-yu, but was arrested the next day, TIN said.

"He was out walking on the street, heard a loud explosion which he assumed was a bomb, and saw emergency vehicles racing in the direction of the noise," a traveling companion told TIN. "The ironic thing is he decided he had better not get involved in any trouble and walked away."

TIN said Cotter was awakened by police at midnight and held for 48 hours in the state security interrogation facilities in northern Lhasa, where he was questioned and videotaped until he wrote a confession.

He was then "made to send a fax to his wife" retracting the earlier one and put under house arrest at the hotel until his expulsion, TIN said.