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WASHINGTON : The United States led global calls for China to show restraint after violence erupted Friday in Tibet, where security forces reportedly used gunfire to quell protests against Chinese rule.
EU leaders attending a summit in Brussels added their voices to the growing chorus of concern over the violence that, according to an official at an emergency medical centre in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, left several people dead and many injured.
"Beijing needs to respect Tibetan culture. It needs to respect multi-ethnicity in their society," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
"We regret the tensions between the ethnic groups and Beijing. The president has said consistently that Beijing needs to have a dialogue with the Dalai Lama," he said.
The US ambassador in Beijing has asked the Chinese government to "show restraint" and not to resort to force, a US State Department spokesman said.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, who fled his homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, said he was "deeply concerned" at the situation.
"These protests are a manifestation of the deep-rooted resentment of the Tibetan people under the present governance," the Dalai Lama said in a statement from the headquarters of his exiled government in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala.
"I therefore appeal to the Chinese leadership to stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue with the Tibetan people," he said.
The protests in Lhasa were the largest against Chinese rule for two decades and came amid an ever-growing international campaign by Tibetans ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels stressed the need for restraint on the part of the Chinese authorities.
Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said that an official statement taking all 27 member countries' concerns into account was being prepared.
"We urge the Chinese government to address the concerns of Tibetans with regards to human rights," he said. "We would like to see some sort of reconciliation between the Chinese authorities and the Tibetans.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the summit participants were "very concerned" and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said "condemnation is high" among the EU member states.
British Foreign Minister David Miliband stressed "the need for restraint on all sides," while Germany said violence should be avoided "at all costs".
"In the eyes of the federal government, peaceful demonstrations are a legitimate expression of the right of freedom of opinion," a foreign ministry spokesman said in Berlin.
Earlier this week, the US State Department removed China from its list of the world's worst human rights abusers, classifying it instead as an authoritarian country undergoing economic reform and rapid social change that has "not undertaken democratic political reform."
President George W Bush triggered angry Chinese reaction when he met the Dalai Lama in public in October during a ceremony at the US Congress.
At the time, Bush praised the Tibetan spiritual leader for keeping the "flame" of Tibet's people alive, and called on Beijing to open political talks with him about the future of the region which China has ruled since 1951. - AFP/ms
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