Beijing, Oct 22, (AFP) - China has confirmed the detention since August of a Tibetan Fulbright scholar and musician, Ngawang Choephel, for "separatist activities," the Office of Tibet in London said Tuesday.

The confirmation, following an enquiry by US Senator James Jeffords, came in a statement from, Mr Shao Wenguang, counselor of the Chinese embassy in United States.

"We have learnt that funded by some Americans, Ngawang Choephel was sent by the Dalai Lama's `government in exile' to Tibet, used the cover of the so-called collecting Tibetan folk songs to gather sensitive intelligence and engaged in illegal separatist activities," Shao said.

The Tibetan government in exile, based in the Indian town of Dharamsala, strongly denied that it had sent Choephel on a spying mission and dismissed the Chinese charges.

"The Chinese accusation ... is only an excuse for his further detention," said Mr Tempa Tsering, the secretary of the exiled government's department of Information and International Relations.

"Many Tibetans have been arrested and tortured by the authorities in Tibet on the pretext that they have been sent by Dharamsala," Tsering said, adding that Choephel had visit the Himalayan region as a musician "on his own volition".

Choephel, a member of the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts was granted Fulbright scholarship 1993 to study and teach ethno-musicology at Middlebury college in the US State of Vermont.

"Right now, our main concern is the safety and the health of Ngawang Choephel," Tsering said, adding that his crime was "trying to preserve the rich Tibetan musical heritage which the Chinese have sinicized to suit their claim over Tibet"