Published by: World Tibet Network News, Wednesday, August 14, 1996

By Mark Lever, AAP Diplomatic Correspondent

CANBERRA, Aug 14 AAP - China today renewed its strong protests over a forthcoming visit by the Dalai Lama despite federal government moves to shore up relations with Beijing.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra said in a statement that it hoped the government would refrain from official contact with the Tibetian spiritual leader "so that our bilateral relations would not be damaged".

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer and Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer will tomorrow announce details of their first trip to Beijing since taking power in March amid growing concern over a spate of recent difficulties.

The government has refused to comment on a report that Mr Downer's department had advised Prime Minister John Howard against meeting the Dalai Lama when he visits next month, as his predecessor Paul Keating did in 1992, for fear of further straining relations.

However Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown said after a meeting with Mr Howard yesterday that the prime minister told him he still hoped a meeting could be arranged.

China annexed Tibet in 1951 and the Dalai Lama has been in exile since a failed uprising in 1959.

The Chinese Embassy statement said he was not merely a religious figure.

"We are opposed to government officials of any country meeting in whatever form with the Dalai Lama and the political activities conducted under whatever disguise by the Dalai lama and his followers to split the motherland and damage national unity," it said.

"The Chinese Government hopes the Australian government will, proceeding from the general interests of the friendly relations between our two countries, refrain from undertaking any official contact with the Dalai Lama and from providing a forum for the Dalai Lama in his anti-China and splittist activities so that our bilateral relations would not be damaged."

A spokesman for Mr Downer played down the protest, saying they had a friendly meeting with Chinese ambassador Hua Junduo on Monday night to discuss the forthcoming visit.

He said Mr Downer had reaffirmed that Australia continued to accept Chinese rule in Tibet and had also restated a commitment to a one-China policy with no formal recognition of Taiwan.

Last week the Chinese foreign ministry fired off another protest over next month's visit to Taipei by Primary Industries Minister John Anderson, but Mr Downer said this was no different to a series of "unofficial" trips by ministers of the previous government.

China has also been at the forefront of international protests over the abolition of the Development Import Finance Facility, leaking correspondence which forced Mr Downer into a humiliating withdrawal of claims in parliament in June that the issue had not been raised with him at ministerial level.

However this week it appeared to back away from an apparent protest in the form of a commentary in the official People's Daily which criticised Australia's role in encouraging an increased level of United States military activity in the region.

The Canberra-based author of the article, Li Xuejiang, wrote to The Australian newspaper to deny that it was intended to criticise the Howard government's foreign policy.

He said it was targeted at US views that China was a threat to regional stability.

"Generally speaking, Chinese-Australian relations are fairly good at present, despite some minor friction," Mr Li said.