WASHINGTON-April 05, (Reuter) The Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, will visit Washington this month in search of support for selfrule talks with China, posing a diplomatic challenge for President Clinton.

Sponsors of the visit said the Tibetan political and spiritual leader, who has led a governmentinexile in India since a failed antiChinese uprising in Tibet in 1959, would be in Washington from April 21 to 24.

The White House welcomed the visit and said administration officials would meet the Dalai Lama.

But it said no decision had been made on a request for a meeting with Clinton.

``The administration welcomes the Dalai Lama's visit and looks forward to discussions with him,'' Eric Rubin, a White House spokesman, said. ``He will definitely be meeting members of the administration, but at what level and with whom has not been decided.''

The visit poses political and diplomatic challenges for Clinton, who is juggling U.S. economic interests in China with concern over its human rights record, its alleged violation of arms control agreements and its aggressive stance on Taiwan.

Vice President Al Gore became the most senior U.S. official to visit Beijing since the crackdown on the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin are planning to exchange visits.

Beijing has accused the Buddhist leader, who made his first visit to Taiwan last month, of joining with Taipei in an effort to ``split'' China. Beijing has threatened to retaliate against countries whose leaders meet the Dalai Lama.

Organizers of the U.S. visit said the monk, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, would ask Clinton to nudge China toward the negotiating table to discuss selfrule, not independence, for Tibet.

``The Dalai Lama is seeking some genuine support for a negotiated settlement,'' said John Ackerly, director of the International Campaign for Tibet, the humanrights group that is sponsoring the visit.

Clinton has relegated his previous three meetings with the Dalai Lama to lowprofile, offcamera ``drop by'' sessions in a deliberate effort to minimize the affront to China.

At the last such meeting, on September 13, 1995, Clinton merely dropped in on a session with Gore, who met the monk in his capacity as a religious leader.

``As he has done the past two years, President Clinton briefly joined the meeting to pay his respects to the Dalai Lama and to express his concern for the preservation of Tibetan religion and culture,'' the White House said then.

Some analysts predicted Clinton would hold a higherprofile meeting this time, despite the risk of angering China, to burnish his humanrights credentials.

``We feel it's inconceivable that the president would not have a oneonone meeting under the present circumstances,'' said Ackerly.

Washington has long urged China to talk with the Dalai Lama or his representatives to resolve their differences. Tibetans want Clinton to push the issue during President Zemin's planned first state visit to Washington this fall.

Winston Lord, a former U.S. envoy to Beijing and the State Department's top policymaker on China until his retirement in January, said China was missing an opportunity by not dealing with the Dalai Lama ``more constructively.''

``The Dalai Lama is a moderate figure,'' Lord said in an interview. He cited the monk's embrace of the ``one country, two systems'' formula for autonomy under Chinese sovereignty, which Beijing plans for Hong Kong after it resumes control of the British colony in July and would like to spread to Taiwan.

In Washington, The Dalai Lama will be the keynote speaker at a convention on Tibet that will bring together members of parliament from more than 50 countries in a House of Representatives' office building.