World Tibet Network News Monday, April 01, 1998

LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) - Pro-Tibetan protesters said on Wednesday they had unfurled a Tibetan flag in front of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji as he was about to address a business dinner in his honour.

Two activists of the Free Tibet Campaign also showered guests with confetti saying "Free China from Chinese Occupation."

A police spokesman said two people had been arrested at the scene for breaching the peace.

One man waving a yellow banner reading "Free Tibet" raced up to the main table just after Zhu and his party had taken their seats. He was quickly removed by security guards.

Zhu ignored the brief interruption.

About two dozen other protesters stood outside the Guildhall in London's financial district, waving Tibetan flags, and shouting slogans demanding China quit Tibet.

Human rights campaigners accuse China of repressing the Buddhist clergy in Tibet and encouraging large-scale migration of ethnic Han Chinese into Tibet, an autonomous region of China.

The protesters acted just before Zhu was to address several hundred businessmen gathered in the Guildhall at the invitation of the China Britain Trade Group, which aims to nurture business with the fledgling Asian superpower.

Zhu, the most senior Chinese leader to visit Britain since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was due to have talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday that officials said would touch on China's human rights record.

A British Foreign Office minister announced earlier that China had agreed to a week-long visit to Tibet by envoys from the European Union to look at the human rights situation.

Derek Fatchett told parliament he hoped the delegation would be able to meet religious leaders and ordinary Tibetans during the visit next month.

It is particularly worried about the circumstances of an eight-year-old boy who was identified in 1995 by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highest religious leader, who died in 1989.

The boy has not been seen in public since he was named by the Dalai Lama as the new Panchen Lama. China refused to recognise him and instead installed its own choice of Panchen Lama.

Tibet has been rocked in the last decade by a string of often violent protests against Chinese rule. Many Tibetan monks and nuns have been sentenced to long prison terms for leading the protests.