World Tibet Network News Wednesday, February 25, 1998

BEIJING, 25 Feb (AP) -- U.S. religious leaders meeting with officials in Tibet have pressed for information about the fate of imprisoned followers of the Dalai Lama, a spokesman said today.

The delegation met Tuesday with the mayor of Lhasa and Tibet's senior

government official in charge of religious affairs, and toured Tibetan

Buddhism's holiest shrine, the Jokhang Temple, spokesman Walter Jennings said.

The leaders of the delegation -- Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York,

Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., and the Rev. Don Argue, president of the National Association of Evangelicals in Carol Stream, Ill. -- have asked about conditions in monasteries and in prisons, Jennings said.

He said the clerics did not want to provide details to the media at this point "because they don't want to be denied access to other officials and frustrate their results."

The delegation does not plan to make any statements until after they leave Tibet on Thursday, he said. The four-day tour of the Lhasa region is the last part of an 18-day trip to China that the delegates made at the invitation of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Chinese officials are engaged in a campaign to discredit the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. Monks and nuns in some monasteries have been forced to attend political lectures, and some who have refused to denounce the Dalai Lama have been forced out.

Government officials accuse the Dalai Lama of seeking independence for

Tibet and claim he is not a genuine religious figure.

The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile after a failed uprising in 1959, said he seeks autonomy for Tibet, not independence.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted Cemolin Danzengchilie, who is

recognized in Tibetan Buddhism as a reincarnated teacher, as telling the delegation: "I have faith in the Dalai Lama as a religious figure, but I object to his activities overseas aimed at splitting the motherland."