Published by World Tibet Network News - Sunday, March 23, 1997

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan, March 23 (Reuter) - As the Dalai Lama toured local Buddhist sites on Sunday, behind-the-scenes battles raged over the political ramifications of the Tibetan leader's unprecedented visit to diplomatically isolated Taiwan.

Though touted by the Dalai Lama and his hosts as a strictly religious affair, the Tibetan Buddhist god-king's six-day journey has stoked local political and religious passions some of them intricately intertwined.

Those feelings first spilled onto the streets on Saturday, when the Dalai Lama's arrival in the southern port of Kaohsiung triggered raucous protests and a few shoving matches between advocates and opponents of Taiwan's and Tibet's independence from communist China.

The Dalai Lama's visit has stirred a long-dormant debate about whether Tibet is part of China a question with deep ramifications for a far hotter debate about whether Taiwan should reunite with China or go it alone.

Taiwan's exiled Republic of China government, ousted from the mainland by the triumphant communists in 1949, maintains that Taiwan and Tibet both are part of China and that Taiwan should reunite with the mainland, though not before Beijing embraces multiparty democracy.

Advocates of Taiwan's independence from China insist that the Dalai Lama, who leads a Tibetan government-in-exile in India, be treated as a visiting head of state, calculating that this would bolster Taiwan's own right to self-determination.

Pro-independence forces want to abolish the cabinet's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, which insists that Tibetans including the Dalai Lama be regarded as Chinese subjects on the premise that Tibet is part of the Taiwan-based republic.

Since making initial contacts in 1993, the Dalai Lama has refused to visit under such conditions, saying they reflected political "misunderstandings."

The government struck a compromise for the Dalai Lama's visit, allowing him to be hosted by the civilian Chinese Buddhist Association rather than the Tibetan affairs agency although there were unconfirmed reports that he was obliged to enter Taiwan under a Republic of China identity.

Analysts say President Lee Teng-hui, expected to meet the Dalai Lama on Thursday, brokered the compromise to reap as much benefit from being associated with the 1989 Nobel peace laureate without overly antagonising arch rival China.

National Taiwan University philosophy professor Yang Hui-nan, quoted by the Liberty Times, said the Buddhist association, known for its close ties to the ruling Nationalist Party, had acted as Lee's "white glove," putting a religious face on the Dalai Lama's political visit.

Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, has assailed the Dalai Lama's visit and his planned audience with Lee as the collusion of fellow "splittists" bent on severing Tibet and Taiwan from China.

The Dalai Lama has declined to take questions about what Beijing insists is the political nature of his visit, his first return to Chinese soil since 1959 when he fled into exile from his Himalayan homeland after an abortive anti-Chinese uprising.

Some experts questioned the legality of Lee's exclusion of the Tibetan affairs commission.

"Tibet is a part of the Republic of China but the government did not allow the commission to participate in the visit issue," Chinese Cultural University mainland affairs expert Yang Kai-huang was quoted by the United Daily News as saying.

The Dalai's visit showed signs of widening deep rifts between Taiwan's three main Buddhist organisations, which hold significant political sway among the island's largely Buddhist population of 21 million.

Although the Dalai Lama's first stop was Taiwan's biggest and richest monastery, Fukuangshan, or Mountain of Buddha's Light outside southern Kaohsiung, the temple's charismatic founder, Hsing Yun, was conspicuous by his absence.

Likewise, leader Cheng Yen of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Association Taiwan's third Buddhist power base after the Chinese Buddhist Association and Fukuangshan stayed away.

"Cheng Yen might be preoccupied...but more likely she does not want to participate in an event that already is steeped in political meaning," said philosophy professor Yang.