PARIS, Oct 30 (Reuter) - The French National Assembly gave the Dalai Lama a tumultuous welcome on Wednesday, and 329 parliamentarians signed an appeal backing his struggle for Tibetan independence.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, on a two-day visit to France that has upset Beijing, received a petition calling for support for his "peaceful struggle for the Tibetan people."

"Our appeal is a political cry to the world and to China. We cannot accept the disappearance of a free and autonomous Tibet," said Louis de Broissia, who helped draft the petition.

The Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his drive to end Chinese rule in Tibet, thanked his hosts and said he was delighted to be in "a cradle of democracy."

"I do not lose the conviction that dialogue will one day begin with China," he said.

The Dalai Lama visited the Assembly on the invitation of a group of deputies studying Tibet, not on that of Assembly president Philippe Seguin. China had warned France that ties could suffer if the exiled god-king were given an official welcome.

The Dalai Lama is on a European tour that last week prompted a Chinese protest to the European Union over a meeting he had with officials of the European Parliament.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt said the Dalai Lama was in Paris to deliver a lecture on Buddhism and for medical tests. He gave no details of the tests.

The Dalai Lama also met Socialist opposition leader Lionel Jospin and Paris mayor Jean Tiberi earlier on Wednesday.

Aides to Justice Minister Jacques Toubon, who met the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, said he met the Tibetan as a private individual rather than as a representative of France's centre-right government.

Neither President Jacques Chirac, who had met the Dalai Lama as mayor of Paris before his election to the presidency in 1995, nor Prime Minister Alain Juppe are to meet him.

REUTER