BEIJING, Jan 2 (AFP) - Officials from the University of Tibet Thursday denied reports of student demonstrations over the forced use of the Chinese language in history courses.

"We have had no demonstrations about the use of Chinese in the university," said Suolang Qunpei, director of the Tibet Language Department.

"There are no regulations about which language to use for teaching, but we mostly use Tibetan unless there is something that is better explained in Chinese," he added.

The London-based Tibet Information Network reported Wednesday that around 30 students lodged a formal complaint at the start of December about a university directive mandating Chinese in history courses even those under the Tibetan Language Department.

TIN quoted sources as saying the students threatened to march through the streets of the capital Lhasa but were persuaded against doing so by university authorities.

The University of Tibet was set up in 1985 to promote the use of the Tibetan language and culture, but pledges that all officials in the region should speak Tibetan were never met, and the university's Tibetan chancellor was repalced by a Chinese-speaker in 1996.

Beijing's sharp crackdown on simmering nationalist sentiment in Tibet at the start of the year has led to the closing of the handful of schools teaching in Tibetan and a widescale reassessment of how to assimilate Tibetans with the rest of China.

In May, Beijing launched a crackdown on religion by banning all photographs of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, from monasteries and implementing a re-education campaign.

Chinese troops took over Tibet in 1951 and then put down an abortive uprising in 1959, prompting the Dalai Lama to flee to India.