Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday - June 19, 1997

BEIJING, June 18 (Reuter) - China's Tibetan mouthpiece has invoked the end of British colonialism in Hong Kong to warn the Himalayan region's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to abandon opposition to Beijing.

The return of Hong Kong on July 1 was part of a tide of history that neither the Dalai Lama nor Western forces hostile to China could hope to resist, the Communist Party-controlled Tibet Daily said in an edition seen in Beijing on Wednesday.

_While the whole nation is celebrating joyously the return of Hong Kong...the Dalai Lama clique is following their reactionary class instincts to revive their lost feudal serf system," the newspaper said, adding that such attempts were doomed.

_The historic trend of uniting the motherland cannot be reversed," it said.

China's state media has in recent weeks fired repeated propaganda volleys at the Dalai Lama, who in 1989 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign for more autonomy in Tibet.

Beijing on Wednesday warned rival Taiwan not to allow the spiritual leader to open an unofficial office for cultural and religious activities in Taipei, saying such a move would be an attempt to establish a separatist stronghold on the island.

_If the Taiwan authorities assist the Dalai clique in opening the office, it only shows their support for the Dalai Lama clique to continue activities to split the motherland," the Xinhua news agency quoted a Tibetan affairs official as saying.

_(Such an action) will certainly be strongly opposed by the entire Chinese people," the official said.

Taiwan's Central News Agency has reported that the Tibetan government-in-exile will this month send a delegation to Taipei to discuss setting up a representative office on the island, which China considers a rebel province.

China has reacted angrily to any suggestion of a united front between Taipei, which it suspects of wanting to declare formal independence, and the Dalai Lama, whom it accuses of fomenting separatist dissent in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India after an abortive uprising against Beijing rule in 1959, says harsh government and Chinese immigration are eroding Tibet's ethnic majority and culture but that he hopes only for genuine autonomy in the remote mountain region.

The end of more than 150 years of British rule in Hong Kong had made clear it was impossible to split China successfully, the Tibet Daily said in a paean to the value of Chinese unity.

_Western anti-Chinese forces do not have the ability to resist the historic tide of unity for the motherland and nor does the Dalai Lama!" it said.

_As the saying goes: 'Boundless is the sea of bitterness, but he who repents can reach the shore'," it said. _The only exit for the Dalai Lama is to go with the historic tide of unifying the motherland and totally abandon thoughts of splitting it."

Courts in the restive Himalayan region jailed 98 Tibetan separatists last year, including a group which organised demonstrations, smashed up a police station and attacked officials, the Tibet Daily said last week.