WRAPUP 1-China ups Tibet death toll,fears unrest may spread

By Nick Macfie

BEIJING, March 22 (Reuters) - China said 19 people were killed in riots in the Tibetan capital last week and official media warned against the unrest spreading to the northwest region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims bridle under Chinese control.

The rising death toll comes amid mounting international concern over China's handling of the protests, overshadowing the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games in August that the host hopes will be a celebration of its arrival as a world power.

The official Xinhua news agency on Saturday quoted officials in Tibet's capital Lhasa as saying 18 civilians and a policemen were killed in the riots, which Beijing insists were engineered by Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

It said another 58 people were seriously injured. Exiled Tibetans claim as many as 100 have died in the protests which spilled over this week into neighbouring ethnic-Tibetan areas.

PRESSED TO BE MORE OPEN

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pressed Beijing to be more open and let the rest of the world see for itself what is happening there.

"China is only hurting itself by preventing foreign observers from seeing what is going on," he told the Bild newspaper.

Beijing has poured troops into the region but is barring foreigners from entering Tibet and some neighbouring ethnic-Tibetan areas.