World Tibet Network News Sunday, March 15, 1998

TAIPEI, March 14 (AFP) - Tibet's spiritual leader Dalai Lama is to visit Taiwan for the second time in December on a trip likely to provoke China's anger, according to a report here Saturday.

Taiwan's Chinese Buddhist Association chairman Ching Hsin Master told the China Times Express the Dalai Lama had accepted an invitation from the group to come here for a Buddhist festival.

Arrangements for the trip were in hand, he said, declining to elaborate. During the Dalai Lama's historic first trip to the island at the end of March 1997, China launched a barrage of protests against him and Taiwan, accusing the two of colluding to split the mainland.

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1951 and eight years later brutally suppressed an uprising against their rule, causing the Dalai Lama and his government to flee, along with tens of thoursand of people.

Since then, the 62-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader has lived in exile in northern India.

The Dalai Lama and Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, Beijing's two arch foes, held a watershed meeting during the Tibetan god-king's six-day tour here.

After their meeting, Beijing labelled both the Dalai Lama and Lee as "splittists," bent on dividing China by separating Tibet and Taiwan from the mainland.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province, after nationalist troops were driven here in 1949 at the end of a civil war.