NEW DELHI, Nov 30 (Reuter) - Indian police detained about 50 Tibetan exiles denouncing what they called Chinese repression in Tibet on Saturday after a noisy protest outside Beijing's embassy in New Delhi, witnesses said.

Police sources said demonstrators had been detained but gave no details.

The protest was on the third day of a state visit to India by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who visited the Taj Mahal in Agra, about 150 km (95 miles) from New Delhi, on Saturday.

The demonstrators shouted slogans such as "China go out, free Tibet" and burnt the Chinese flag outside the embassy compound in the city's Chanakyapuri area, the witnesses said.

The witnesses said a Chinese official came out of the embassy compound and asked police to remove the demonstrators, who were later dragged into police buses and driven away.

A statement by the New Delhi-based Tibetan Youth Congress and the Tibetan Women's Association, distributed by the protesters, said: "China continues to brutally repress Tibet and Tibetans.

"There continues to be religious, cultural and human rights violations in Tibet," said the statement, headed "An appeal to our Indian brothers and sisters."

It was the latest in a series of protests by exiled Tibetans since Jiang arrived on Thursday for the first state visit to India by a Chinese president.

On Thursday, demonstrators in a New Delhi Tibetan encampment burnt an effigy of Jiang and the Chinese flag.

Around 130,000 Tibetans live in India, 4,000 of them in the Indian capital.

Many of them arrived with the Dalai Lama, the Himalayan region's spiritual leader, after an abortive 1950 uprising against China's annexation of Tibet.

Meanwhile, an open letter to Jiang from the Tibetan Freedom Movement said: "The simple message for you and your government is this: Quit Tibet and let Tibetans govern themselves."

Copies of the letter, dated November 28 and made available to reporters, said the original had been written with the blood of Tibetans.

On Thursday, the Dalai Lama urged Jiang to stop what he called Chinese repression in Tibet.

"The present Chinese policy is resulting in a kind of cultural genocide in Tibet," he said in a statement. He asked Jiang to resolve the problem peacefully through dialogue.

The Buddhist spiritual leader has lived in exile in the north Indian Himalayan town of Dharamsala since 1959, when he fled his homeland along with some followers after an abortive uprising against China's 1950 annexation of Tibet.