Thursday August 21 2:14 PM EDT

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A U.S. congressman back from a rare clandestine tour of Tibet says that China was maintaining a "death grip" on the region and called for urgent action to save its unique Himalayan Buddhist culture.

"The clock is ticking for Tibet," said Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, a religious-freedom champion who traveled there last week, unannounced, on a tourist visa.

"If nothing is done, a country, its people, religion and culture will continue to grow fainter and fainter and could one day disappear," he told a news conference Wednesday.

Wolf visited Tibet August 9-13 accompanied by a member of his congressional staff and by an unidentified Westerner whom he described as fluent in Tibetan and steeped in its culture, history and religion.

They traveled on U.S. passports and on tourist visas issued by China, which crushed a popular anti-Chinese uprising there in 1959. At that time, Tibet's spiritual and political leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled across the border to India and established a government in exile in Dharamsala.

Wolf said he was not asked nor did he make known that he was a member of Congress during the visit, which he said was to investigate reports of persistent and systematic religious persecution.

"Had I done so, I am sure that my visit would not have been approved, just as other members of Congress requesting permission to visit Tibet have been turned down" by China, he said, citing the case earlier this year of Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican.

"China seems certain to maintain its death grip on this land and strives to do so behind sealed doors," said Wolf, who described himself as only the second sitting member of the House of Representatives to visit Tibet since 1959. Only three U.S. senators have visited in recent decades, shepherded by the Chinese, he said.

"I cannot think of another place in the world where a tighter lid is kept on open discussion," he said. "Government agents, spies and video cameras guard against personal outside contact. Offenders, even suspected offenders, are dealt with quickly and brutally."

During his three days in Lhasa, the capital, and one day in the countryside, Wolf said he had met Buddhist monks and ordinary Tibetans "who risked their personal safety and well-being to steal a few moments alone with me to tell how bad conditions are in Tibet."

He described Lhasa as being swamped by government-prompted ethnic Han Chinese settlers who outnumbered ethnic Tibetans in the capital by 160,000 to 100,000, he said, and "probably now outnumber Tibetans in their own country."

He said the inescapable conclusion was that China was "swallowing Tibet" and that "Tibet is disappearing," claims that China regularly denies.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman, Yu Shuning, said, "The total population is now 2.3 million, of whom over 95 percent are ethnic Tibetans. The figures answer his accusations."

Under pressure from the Republican-led Congress, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently agreed to name a special coordinator within the State Department by Nov. 1 to nudge China toward negotiations with the Dalai Lama.

He urged the administration to press China for the release of what he called 700 prisoners of conscience in Tibet during Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit here, scheduled for late October.