Tibetan woman holds Olympic flame atop Everest

By Nick Mulvenney

EVEREST BASE CAMP, China (Reuters) - A Tibetan woman took the Olympic torch the last steps to the top of Everest on Thursday, realizing "a dream of all Chinese people", but Tibetan exiles criticized Beijing for politicizing the Games.

"Long live Tibet!" and "Long live Beijing!", the climbers, all wearing red, shouted joyously into a TV camera after unfurling the Chinese national flag, the Olympic flag and a flag bearing the Beijing Olympic logo.

The ambitious project to take the torch to the Himalayan peak was cast as the highlight of the relay ahead of the Games, which start in exactly three months' time, and followed weeks of protests against Beijing's rule in Tibet.

"We have realized a promise to the world and a dream of all the Chinese people," base camp commander Li Zhixin told reporters after being mobbed by jubilant friends and colleagues.

Communist China has spent billions of dollars on staging the Olympics, eager to project the image of a modern and vibrant country. But protests during the international leg of the torch relay have bruised Chinese pride and provoked a surge of nationalist sentiment.

Exiled Tibetan officials and rights groups said the Everest flame was in bad taste and not in keeping with the spirit of the Games.

"During these times when the situation in Tibet is very grave and grim we felt it is very provocative to take the Olympic torch to the Tibetan side of the mountain," said Thubten Samphel, secretary of the exiled government's information department in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

"The Chinese are suppressing the Tibetan people ... it is not in harmony with the spirit of the Olympics," he told Reuters.

Tenzin Dorjee, deputy director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement e-mailed from New York: "Beijing's conquest of Everest is a political move meant to reassert China's control of Tibet."

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950, and nine years later the Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising against communist rule. He is branded a "separatist" by China, but says he only wants greater autonomy for the region.

"AGREED TO DISAGREE"

Anti-Chinese protesters caused serious disruption to some legs of the main torch relay on its journey around the world after deadly riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 14 and subsequent unrest in other Tibetan areas of China.

Tibetan groups said they planned prayer vigils around the world later on Thursday to mourn those killed in protests in Tibet.

China says a "Dalai Lama clique" was responsible for the disturbances in Tibet and protests over the Olympic torch.

The Chinese state-run media this week accused the Tibetan spiritual leader of trying to blacken China's name and prevent its rise, days after the two sides held a rare round of talks.