Lhasa monks accuse China of lying over unrest

"DALAI CLIQUE"

China has blamed the "Dalai clique" for the unrest and called him a separatist. The Dalai Lama denies he wants anything more than autonomy for his homeland and has condemned violence "from the Chinese side and also from the Tibetan side".

Marches by monks in Lhasa turned within days into rioting in which non-Tibetan Chinese migrants were attacked and their property burned, until security forces filled the streets.

The protesting monks at the Jokhang Temple said on Thursday the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama was not behind the violence, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

He has said the Beijing Olympics in August are a chance for the world to press China on its rights record.

"In order to be a good host to the Olympic Games, China must improve its record in the field of human rights and religious freedom," he told India's NDTV news channel in an interview.

The protests spread to parts of Chinese provinces that border Tibet and have large ethnic Tibetan populations. China has poured troops into the region, many Tibetans have been arrested and serious unrest appears to have fizzled out.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday again called for those involved in the Lhasa violence to give themselves up.

"We urge those lawbreakers involved in burning, smashing and looting who are still at large to hand themselves in," he said.

Human Rights Watch said the United Nations human rights council should address the crisis in Tibet.

The group said Australia, the European Union, Switzerland and the United States raised abuses in Tibet at a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, but China blocked debate, backed by Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy left open the possibility he might not attend the Olympic opening ceremony.

"We were shocked by what happened in Tibet and we made our great concern known, each in our own way," Sarkozy said at a news conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Washington said China had invited a U.S. diplomat to join a government-organized trip by foreign diplomats to Lhasa on Friday and Saturday and the United States had accepted.

(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing, Krittivas Mukherjee and Bappa Majumdar in New Delhi and Kate Leung in Hong Kong; editing by Andrew Roche)