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

TAIPEI, Taiwan Mar 26 (AP) - While Beijing fumed, the Dalai Lama's unprecedented visit to Taiwan took on a deeper political hue today as he met with the main opposition party and planned to see the vice president.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader will also meet President Lee Teng-hui before ending his six-day visit Thursday, the presidential office said.

But that meeting will be held at an official guesthouse instead of Lee's office to deflect suspicion that Lee is treating the Dalai Lama as a foreign head of state, the office said.

China has ruled Tibet with military force since a 1950 invasion, and claims Taiwan as a secessionist province. It views a meeting between Lee and the Dalai Lama as a convention of "splittists," its label for those it accuses of trying to break up the motherland.

After four days of largely religious events, the Dalai Lama met today with the Democratic Progressive Party, which advocates independence for Taiwan and an end to the ideology that it and China are one country. The meeting took place in a Buddhist seminary outside Taipei.

Beijing says it would use military force to prevent that from happening.

Later he was to meet with Premier and Vice President Lien Chan at a Taipei hotel.

DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang said he asked the Dalai Lama for advice about how to talk to China, their mutual antagonist.

The Dalai Lama says his visit is purely religious and cultural, but it is "a great victory for the independence clique," The Independence Evening Post editorialized.

Taiwan is the seat of the Nationalists who fled the Communist takeover of China in the 1949. Officially it still adheres to the doctrine that it is part of China, but China is convinced that under President Lee, Taiwan is moving toward independence.

The Dalai Lama and Lee are expected to discuss setting up a representative office of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Since fleeing Tibet after an aborted 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama has worked in both political and religious circles to preserve Tibetan Buddhist culture.

He said earlier this week that he wanted only a degree of autonomy for Tibet, not full independence.

China, however, does not believe the visit is innocent of political intent. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Cui Tiankai accused the Dalai Lama of "misleading the press and confusing people's minds" while secretly nurturing his aim to split Tibet from China.