World Tibet Network News Thursday, June 18, 1998

PARIS, June 17 (AFP) - The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, met top French officials on Wednesday as part of a three-day visit to France during which leaders of the executive declined to hold talks with him.

The Dalai Lama on Wednesday held a 30-minute meeting with National Assembly Speaker Laurent Fabius, the third most important person in the French state hierarchy, before addressing the assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, at the invitation of its chairman, former culture minister Jack Lang.

Fabius, a former prime minister, said he and Dalai Lama spoke of ways of improving the situation in Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Parliamentary sources said that last week Chinese authorities

intervened to try to ensure the Tibetan spiritual leader was not given an official reception at the National Assembly.

The Dalai Lama, who arrived here on Monday, told the foreign affairs committee that the situation in Tibet was "seriously deteriorating"

He said China was carrying out "cultural genocide in Tibet,

intentional or not." Beijing annexed the Himalayan territory in 1959, triggering the exile of the Dalai Lama, now 62.

Lang said the French people stood by Tibetans. He called on the

French authorities to push for the "recognition of the rights of the Tibetan people."

President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin did not meet with the Dalai Lama during his stay, unlike the late President Francois Mitterrand, who received the Tibetan spiritual leader in 1992.

He was due to leave for Innsbruck, Austria, later on Tuesday to

attend a scientific conference there.