BEIJING, Dec 28 (AFP) - A Tibetan musician detained while travelling in Tibet on a US scholarship has been sentenced to 18 years for spying, a Chinese source confirmed Saturday, sparking an international outcry over the unusually heavy sentence.

Ngawang Choephel, who had been detained in September 1995, was sentenced in Tibet's second city of Shigatse, said Zhang Limin, a presenter for Chinese state-run television in Tibet.

"Choephel was sentenced on December 26 by the intermediary court of Shigatse to 18 years in prison and four years deprivation of political rights," Zhang told AFP by telephone.

Choephel, 30, was living in exile but had returned to Tibet to make a film with private US funding about traditional Tibetan music and dance, according to Tibetan organizations outside China.

He was arrested in September 1995 and accused of spying for an unspecified "third country".

Zhang said Choephel "was a teacher in a song and dance troop of the Dalai Lama", the spiritual leader of Tibetans who has lived in exile since 1959.

He said Choephel "came back to China under the pretext of collecting cultural material."

In a faxed statement from London, the Tibetan Information Network (TIN) said Chinese authorities had given no evidence to support the charges against Choephel other than to say he had "confessed" to espionage activities.

TIN said the sentence was far longer than expected. It pointed out the sentence exceeds by three years that imposed on US-based human rights activist Harry Wu, who was eventually released from jail and deported to the United States after an international outcry.

Wu was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1995 after returning to China from exile.

TIN said China had already accused the United States of being the country to which Choephel was allegedly supplying information, in a letter from the Chinese ambassador to Washington to US Senator James Jeffords in October this year.

It said the sentence was "provocative" and could harm ties between Beijing and the United States.

Washington has already denounced the sentence, while the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India has denied that Choephel was a spy.

Choephel was a Fulbright scholar, a prestigious international program which has given awards to more than 100,000 students since World War II. The program is the responsibility of the US Department of State.

China has intensified its efforts against supporters of the Dalai Lama this year, calling the leader's political activities "separatist."

The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since China put down an anti-Chinese revolt in Tibet in 1959.

A series of editorials published in the Tibet Daily last month proclaimed the government's desire to wipe out the Dalai Lama's influence in all areas, notably attacking the proliferation of "anarchic" religious festivals and cultism.