BEIJING, March 5 (AFP) - Separatists are pushing Tibet towards disaster, the leader of the autonomous region told the Chinese parliament according to reports Wednesday.

The chairman of China's Tibetan Autonomous Regional Government, Gyaincain Norbu, said: "Separatist activities are a crime which are leading Tibet into disaster."

"The Tibetans reject separatism because it threatens social stability and as a result threatens the vast majority of people," he told the National People's Congress, according to the People's Daily.

"Tibetans will never have as many rights as they do now and they will have more and more in the future," he said

China invaded Tibet in 1951, and the region's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and many of his followers fled to India in 1959 after an abortive anti-Chinese revolt.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen told a meeting of regional deputies that Tibet was necessary to protecting China's national security and urged those who had attacked Chinese rule to visit the area.

"Traditional culture has been well protected in Tibet, which also enjoys social stability. The attacks and slanders hurled by some Western media are completely groundless," he said, quoted by the Xinhua state news agency.

He noted that some Western newspapers had alleged that culture and traditions in Tibet had been sabotaged, and that industrial development had disturbed Tibetan people's peaceful life.

"Those who made such allegations should come to Tibet for a look by themselves," he said.

"International anti-China forces often used the Tibet issue and Dalai Lama as their tools," he pointed out.

"Therefore Tibet, as an important frontier defence in the southwestern part of our country, has a significant role in the struggle of safeguarding the motherland and opposing separatism," he added.