Chinese troops fired at Tibetan crowd, Dalai Lama says

PARIS (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama accused Chinese troops of opening fire on protesters in eastern Tibet on August 18 and said in an interview published on Thursday he had unconfirmed information that 140 people were killed.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader told the French newspaper Le Monde that the army opened fire during a protest in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham on Monday.

"I gather that 140 Tibetans were killed, although the figure needs to be confirmed," the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying.

"Since the riots in March, reliable witnesses have established that 400 people have been killed in the Lhasa area alone ... If you consider the whole of Tibet, the number of victims is obviously higher," he said.

An aide to the Dalai Lama in India, where the Tibetan Buddhist leader is based, played down his comments.

"We know about disturbances in the Kham region. But we do not have any details or figures about injuries or deaths," said the aide, Chhime Chhoekyapa, in the northern town of Dharamsala.

"Nor do we have any exact dates for the disturbances."

The Dalai Lama is nearing the end of a two-week visit to France during which he has already accused China of increasing repression in Tibet.

On Monday the Free Tibet Campaign, an activist group, said China had stepped up repression in its ethnic Tibetan regions to prevent any protests during the Beijing Olympics.

China's crackdown on protests in Tibet in March drew widespread criticism in the international community and Beijing accused the Dalai Lama and his allies of orchestrating the trouble. He denies this.

"Ten thousand people have been arrested (since March). We don't know where they are being held," the Dalai Lama said in his interview with Le Monde.

He said Chinese authorities were accelerating the construction of military camps in Tibet and this made him fear they had plans to maintain Tibet under long-term repression.

"The military presence in Tibet is old, but the frenzy of new construction in the Amdo and Kham regions makes me say that this colonization by the army is designed to last," he said.

The Dalai Lama said last week in a meeting with French parliamentarians that he feared China would accelerate the settlement of one million ethnic Han Chinese in Tibet immediately after the Games to dilute the ethnic Tibetan population still further.

His visit to France is focused mainly on religious commitments, but on Friday he will meet President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

Sarkozy declined to meet the Dalai Lama, drawing widespread criticism that he was caving in to pressure from Beijing, which had warned him through its ambassador there would be "serious consequences" if such a meeting took place.

(Additional reporting by Delhi bureau)

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Mike Collett-White)