by Philippe Massonnet

PARIS, Oct 29 (AFP) - A senior French minister met privately with the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, but Tibet's exiled spiritual leader got an official cold shoulder ahead of President Jacques Chirac's visit to China next spring.

The Dalai Lama met Justice Minister Jacques Toubon, a baron of the ruling Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, for talks which officials described as "strictly private."

Toubon "paid a visit" to the Buddhist leader's hotel, a ministry spokesman said, hours after Beijing warned Paris against giving any official status to the three day trip.

Observers said the Toubon meeting was intended to limit the impression France was kow-towing to China.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt called the meeting "a mark of consideration due to a great spiritual leader," but gave no further details.

Toubon is second to Prime Minister Alain Juppe in the government hierarchy.

Paris is at pains to describe the visit by the 1989 Nobel Peace laureate, who arrived Monday, as purely "pastoral" to avoid tension with Beijing ahead of Chirac's visit there next May.

The Dalai Lama is scheduled to meet parliamentary deputies, but has not been invited to either the president's or the prime minister's offices. But contrary to earlier reports, he will not address the French parliament.

Also he will not be welcomed by speaker Philippe Seguin, number three in the state hierarchy.

In Beijing on Tuesday, Shen Guogfang, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, warned France against any official contact with the Dalai Lama while the Tibetan spiritual leader is in France.

"France has assured us that the visit of the Dalai Lama has no official character," he said. "We hope that the French authorities will respect the agreement between us... Otherwise, our relations will be affected."

Arriving in Paris Monday the Dalai Lama said "I would be very happy to meet them (Chirac and Juppe), but if it causes problems for them, I do not want to complicate matters."

In an interview with the Le Monde daily he condemned China's "cultural genocide" in his homeland, although he reiterated he remained open to negotiations with Beijing without pre-conditions and stressed he was not demanding Tibet's independence, only its autonomy.

"A sort of cultural genocide is happening in Tibet. And if losing independence is acceptable, on the contrary losing one's culture, accepting the destruction of our spirituality, of Tibetan Buddhism, is unthinkable," he said.

"Protecting the cultural heritage of Tibet has become my main concern," he added.

The Buddhist leader said the human rights situation in Tibet had worsened, but said Beijing was facing inevitable pressure to change and therefore he had to be ready to talk.

"In the immediate future there is certainly not a lot of hope. But I think in the longer term things will change. Because China is in the process of changing," he said.

The exiled Tibetan leader will late Tuesday attend a public meeting on spiritual questions organised by the Tibetan community in France and a pro-Tibet association.

Beijing, which has ruled Tibet since 1950, has already condemned a visit by the Dalai Lama to the European parliament in Strasbourg last week as "gross interference" in its internal affairs.

The Dalai Lama's visit comes at a delicate time for Paris as it seeks to build bridges with Beijing, with Chirac preparing his first official visit to China as president.

Chirac's visit is to cement relations with China that began improving only in 1994 following a row two years earlier after France sold fighter planes to Taiwan.

That crisis deepened further in November 1993 when the late French president Francois Mitterrand met the Dalai Lama at the Elysee Palace. Chirac, who was then mayor of Paris, also welcomed him at city hall.

In 1994 Mitterrand's wife Danielle, who runs the human rights group France-Libertes, met the Dalai Lama.

Since then France has welcomed Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng.

Chinese Premier Li said in Beijing on Monday that he had high hopes for Chirac's visit next May "in the economic and political spheres," and that China appreciated Chirac's advocacy of "dialogue without confrontation."