GENEVA, May 6 (Reuter) - A United Nations committee, expressing concern at ill-treatment and deaths of prisoners in Chinese jails, on Monday called on Beijing to introduce a law to bar the use of torture. The 10-member Committee on Torture, after a two-day hearing, also urged China to stop public executions, to ensure the independence of the country's judiciary, and to set up a system to investigate complaints of brutality by police.

The conclusions of the Committee, which monitors compliance by signatories with the 1987 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel and Degrading Treatment, were read to Chinese diplomats and U.N. officials by Canadian lawyer Peter Burns.

Burns, a member of the Committee which groups independent experts, said that according to reports provided by non- governmental organisations (NGOs) "torture may be practised on a widespread scale in China." The Committee, he said, was also concerned by reports of deaths from mistreatment by police in prisons in Tibet.

China's ambassador to the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Wu Jianmin, told the Committee he would pass on its recommendations to his government, which he said was working to live up to its obligations under the Convention.

But said he was concerned that the U.N. body's conclusions were largely based on reports by NGOs, some of which he said were biassed and based on accounts by dissidents.

"If you base yourselves on prejudiced information, and I would call it disinformation, I fear you may lose your objectivity," the envoy said.

In a report to the Committee last Friday, China said it had stepped up a fight against torture and mistreatment, which it said was already deemed a "criminal act" with no justification under Chinese law.

But the London-based human rights group Amnesty International, in a submission to the U.N. body, said torture remained systemic "in police stations, in detention centres, labour camps and prisons across the country."

Amnesty argued that many acts which constitute torture or ill-treatment -- used to punish, intimidate or coerce -- were not offences under Chinese law and therefore were not accepted by the authorities as violations.

In its conclusions, the Committee also said it was concerned at reports that many people were detained in secret and their families were not advised. It urged Beijing to ensure that prisoners were given prompt access to legal advice.

It urged Beijing to bring its methods of execution of people sentenced to death into line with the Convention, which effectively bars public capital punishment -- still widespread in China, according to human rights groups.

And it called for the establishment in the Chinese capital or in another big city of a centre for the rehabilitation for the victims of torture.

The Committee hearings came twoweeks after China succeeded for the sixth year running in averting a United tates-ponsored resolution in the U.N.'s 53-nation Human Rights Commission expressing concern over its rights record.

But while the Commission is made up of government representatives, whose vote is often influenced by political and diplomatic considerations, members take their decisions by consensus and do not have to take into account the policies or views of their own governments.