WELLINGTON, Sept 13 (AFP) - A Maori leader Friday criticised a Chinese official's condemnation the Dalai Lama's five-day visit to New Zealand, saying it was "intimidation of the worst kind."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang told reporters in Beijing Thursday that the visit here by Tibet's exiled spiritual leader would damage relations between Wellington and Beijing.

Shen said a meeting between Prime Minister Jim Bolger and the Dalai Lama represented interference in China's internal affairs.

China buys 36 percent of New Zealand's wool exports.

Te Atiawa tribal spokesman Peter Love said Shen's comments were "clearly intimidation of the worst kind and a grave insult to Maori, who acknowledge the Dalai Lama as the legitimate absolute leader of six million Tibetans and believe he was forced out of his own country by the guns of the Chinese government.

China annexed Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

"The Chinese government is now interfering in the internal affairs of this country whilst it is unable to sell its twisted story about how it came to be in Tibet to any country in the world," Love said.

The Maori leader condemned the Chinese invasion of Tibet and its "continuing illegal occupation" of that country.

"His holiness, the Dalai Lama, will continue to be welcome in this country as the spiritual figurehead of all indigenous people of the world," Love said.

On Tuesday the Dalai Lama was driven straight from Wellington airport to the Te Atiawa tribe's marae (meeting ground) and a welcome by 200 supporters and dignitaries.

Meanwhile, in Dunedin, south of here, Friday, a 3,000-strong crowd gathered in the city centre to hear the Dalai Lama give a public address.

The Dalai Lama was due to leave for Australia Saturday.