Chinese President Hu Jintao took a hard line Saturday in his first remarks on the recent unrest in Tibet, saying the matter is an internal affair that impacts Chinese sovereignty.
Hu's comments to visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came a day after China intensified attacks on overseas critics, blasting a U.S. House resolution on Tibet as "crude interference" and labeling a leading Tibetan exile group a terrorist organization.
His remarks follow massive demonstrations by pro-Tibet activists and other groups targeting the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. The protests have stirred anger from the government in Beijing and among Chinese citizens.
Hu spoke to Rudd at a meeting on the sidelines of a regional economic forum in the southern province of Hainan. He addressed the issues of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama -- whom Beijing blames for fomenting the unrest -- and the anti-government protests that broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last month.
"Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Hu as saying. "It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland."
As Tibet's former Communist Party boss, Hu enforced a harsh crackdown against the last major anti-government protests there in 1989. He has tightened Chinese rule over the Himalayan region since taking over as president in 2003, stepping-up controls over Tibetan Buddhism and increasingly opened the region to travel and migration from other parts of China.
The latest round of Tibetan protests began peacefully among Buddhist monks in Lhasa on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising in which the Dalai Lama fled to India. Four days later they turned violent, with hundreds of shops torched and Chinese civilians attacked.
China says 22 people were killed in the riots, many in arson attacks, and over 1,000 detained. The Dalai Lama's India-based government-in-exile says more than 140 people were killed.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the resolution passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives "crudely interfered in China's internal politics, seriously hurting the feelings of the Chinese people."
The resolution sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Beijing to "end its crackdown on nonviolent Tibetan protesters," along with cultural, religious, economic and linguistic "repression."
Chinese state media also lashed out at the Tibetan Youth Congress, accusing it of orchestrating recent protests in a bid to overthrow Chinese rule and sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August.
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