Published by World Tibet Network News - Wednesday, March 26, 1997

TAIPEI, March 24 (AFP) - The Dalai Lama on Monday called for an end to bloodshed in the name of religion and urged the world's religious leaders to work together to promote peace for the good of all.

He told a meeting of Taiwan leaders from different religions that they bore a responsibility to help end wars across the world.

"Sometimes religion becomes yet another source for more division and sometimes open conflict," he told a gathering in Taipei which included Moslem, Catholic and Taoist leaders.

People in highly developed, advanced societies were often confronting a "moral crisis," he said, at the televised meeting held in the Howard Plaza Hotel.

"Because of that situation I feel the different religious traditions have a great responsibility to provide peace of mind, a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among humanity."

He outlined four ways of promoting inter-faith harmony, including meetings between religious scholars and practitioners to exchange views and differences.

The exiled Tibetan leader also proposed that groups of people from different faiths should make pilgrimages together to the world's holy places to learn from each other.

World religious leaders should also come together in a summit "as such a meeting is a powerful message in the eyes of millions of people," he added.

From the beginning the Dalai Lama has taken pains to stress the religious nature of his trip to try to soften its political overtones.

So far he has only met with local municipal leaders, and has not been accorded the honours usually laid on for state guests.

On Sunday he travelled round the south of the island visiting two temples before preaching for almost two hours before a packed 50,000-strong audience in Kaohsiung stadium.

But President Lee Teng-hui confirmed that he would meet with the Tibetan Buddhist leader on Thursday, just before he ends his six-day visit, in a move likely to infuriate China.

Beijing has dubbed the Dalai Lama's visit to the nationalist island a meeting of splittists.

A leader of the island's 80,000-strong Moslem community meanwhile hailed the Dalai Lama's visit and urged him to help protect the six mosques in Tibet, which has been under Chinese rule since 1951.

Earlier the Dalai Lama called for a free exchange of views between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhists saying they could learn from each other at a gathering with about 100 Buddhist leaders from Taiwan.

"There is something in Tibetan Buddhism which Chinese Buddhism does not have" and vice versa, he told the televised meeting, adding that an exchange of views is "mutually beneficial."

He also told the group he was keen to set up a system of nuns, known as Bhikhuni, which has only been properly developed in the Chinese Buddhist system.

"I hope that all the sects will discuss it and reach consensus to thoroughly pass down this tradition. For men and women are equal and can both accept Buddha's teachings on an equal basis."

He was due to hold a press conference later Monday, before meeting with Tibetans living in Taiwan.