WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (AFP) - A group of US congressional staff members is headed to India and Nepal on a mission aimed at helping some 110,000 Tibetan refugees in the two South Asian countries, sponsors of the trip said Wednesday.

"We hope the delegation will produce a report that will enable us to propose legislation (to help Tibetans) in the next Congress," said Bhuchung Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). "We want the United States to take a more pro-active approach."

Five staff members from the House of Representatives and Senate foreign relations committees left Tuesday on an 11-day visit to India and Nepal, where ICT which is financing their trip estimates the number of Tibetan refugees at 110,000.

They were to meet with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and with Indian and Nepalese government officials, the nonprofit group said.

Congressional staff members who participated in two previous trips, in 1988 and 1992, worked successfully on their return for the establishment of a Voice of America (VOA) Tibetan service and Radio Free Asia.

The latter, which like VOA is a US government-funded broadcast service, began transmitting programs in Tibetan on December 1, drawing an angry condemnation from Beijing.

Some members of the Republican-run Congress have been outspoken in pressing for the dispatch of a US special envoy to Tibet, a Himalayan territory annexed by China in the 1950s.

Such a move, opposed by President Bill Clinton's administration, would surely anger Chinese authorities, for whom sovereignty over Tibet remains a highly sensitive subject.