World Tibet Network News Tuesday, February 24, 1998

BEIJING, Feb 23 (AFP) - Premier Li Peng called for socialism to be imposed on religious work as a delegation of US clergymen investigating religious conditions in China arrived Monday in Tibet, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Li met directors of China's religious affairs bureau and urged them to

"promote the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics" in

handling religion.

The Chinese premier "stressed the importance of the implementation" of the communist party's policies on religious work, Xinhua said.

Li made the call as a three US clergymen arrived in the troubled region, marking the first independent ecumenical trip to Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Xinhua said Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark and the Reverend Don Argue, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, visited the Norbulingka Palace in Tibet where previous Dalai Lamas conducted government affairs.

The delegation, comprising McCarrick, Argue and Rabbi Arthur Shneier,

president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, has met Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Beijing and Shanghai mayor Xu Kuangdi.

The clerics also visited Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu province and Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan province. Tibet is their last stop on their tour.

On Saturday, the delegation asked Beijing to address concerns over the

registration of churches in the country, saying the issue could hurt

US-China relations.

Jiang invited the delegation during his landmark Washington summit with US President Bill Clinton last October.

China has been harshly criticised in the United States for alleged

suppression of religious practice and its tight control over religious life in Tibet.

The Chinese military seized control of Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama,

Tibet's spiritual leader, fled into exile in India eight years later

following an abortive anti-Chinese uprising.