Chinese tourist visas to France down two-thirds

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese tourist visas to France have plummeted in Beijing, a French diplomat said in comments published on Tuesday, amid anger over anti-China protests during the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay.

Relations between France and China have soured in the run up to the Beijing Games after thousands of pro-Tibet protesters disrupted the torch Paris relay in April, trying to snatch the flame from a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete.

Chinese nationalists subsequently called for a boycott of French goods and picketed outlets of French supermarket chain Carrefour in a number of Chinese cities.

The French Foreign Ministry late last month said Beijing's official tourism body had urged tour operators to stop selling holiday packages to France.

French ambassador to China Herve Ladsous said visa applications lodged in Beijing in recent weeks were down two-thirds on the same period last year, and that French officials had held discussions with their Chinese counterparts.

"We were given the assurance that there had never been an order for tourism agencies to boycott France," Ladsous said in a transcript of a press briefing posted on the French embassy's website on Wednesday (www.ambafrance-cn.org).

"We have taken note of this assurance but note that the problem still remains."

Ladsous said that some of the fall was due to an official order discouraging officials from traveling overseas in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan last month, and a slow-down in outbound travel ahead of the Olympics.

"But there is more than that as France has been more directly touched and it is clear that the fall of two-thirds relates to Beijing, whereas in Shanghai, where the authorities did not give any instruction, the visas continued to be delivered at the same speed as before."

Disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris sparked street protests and boycott calls targeting French companies in cities across China.

French President Sarkozy fanned the discontent by refusing to say whether he would attend the opening ceremony on August 8, suggesting he would boycott the event unless China started talks with Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

China blames the Dalai Lama for masterminding unrest in ethnic Tibetan areas in the country's far west in March with an eye to spoiling the August's Olympic Games. The Dalai Lama, who says he wants autonomy but not independence for Tibet, rejected the accusations.

(Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fox)