TAIPEI, April 2 (Reuter) - Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui has rejected a proposal to scrap a panel set up to bolster Taipei's claims of sovereignty over Mongolia and Tibet, officials said on Wednesday.

``The president told us that he strongly opposed scrapping the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission,'' lawmaker Hung Hsin-jung of the ruling Nationalist party told Reuters.

The Nationalist government set up the commission in the 1950s to reinforce its claims over Tibet and Mongolia, despite the fact that Mongolia had long become independent.

Chinese forces marched into Tibet in 1950 and it became a Chinese autonomous region the next year.

The Nationalists, who fled the mainland after losing a civil war to the Chinese communists in 1949, consider themselves the legitimate government of all China and regard Tibet and Mongolia as part of China.

Lee met a group of ruling party lawmakers late on Tuesday and sought support for continued operation of the commission, Hung said.

Lawmakers of the Democratic Progressive Party, which supports independence for Taiwan, proposed scrapping the commission in late March, shortly after a visit by Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama.

They feel that scrapping the commission would amount to Taiwan technically abandoning its long-standing policy of being the rightful government of all of China.

Beijing has repeatedly warned Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, against moves towards declaring independence, saying they would warrant a Chinese attack.

It has also assailed both President Lee and the Dalai Lama as ``splittists'' trying to break from the motherland.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after an unsuccessful uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.