(October 31 1996, 7:53 PM EST)

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Radio Free Asia, a new U.S. thorn in China's flesh, will begin beaming uncensored news to Tibet next month and expanded programs to China next year, the radio station said Thursday.

Short-wave broadcasts of a half-hour news show in Tibetan repeated three times daily will begin being heard there Nov. 18, the station's president, Richard Richter, said.

Radio Free Asia was created by Congress as an Asian counterpart to the anti-communist Radio Free Europe. Set up as a congressionally funded private corporation, it began Chinese-language broadcasts Sept. 29. China has accused the station of interfering in its internal affairs.

The station, which does not disclose the location of its transmitters to prevent jamming and avoid embarrassment to its hosts, also plans to phase in local-language broadcasts to Burma, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia next year.

Broadcasts to China, currently half-hour shows repeated three times a day with news updates, would be expanded to 51/2 hours daily in the first quarter of 1996, Richter added in a telephone interview.

Although Beijing has denounced the station, it does not appear to be making any concerted effort to jam its signal, Richter, a veteran television network producer, said.

But he said one host government had pulled the plug on a Radio Free Asia transmitter under pressure from Beijing. ``They decided they didn't want to defy the Chinese,'' he said.