The 'Dalai clique' planned, mobilised people and funded a 'decisive battle against the Chinese government', claimed an article issued by the official Xinhua news agency yesterday.

Chinese officials including Premier Wen Jiabao have since the outbreak of violence in Lhasa on March 14 pinned the blame squarely on the 'separatist' 'Dalai clique' that China says seeks to sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August. The 'Dalai clique' is a throwaway term Beijing uses to refer to the Tibetan government-in-exile headed by the Dalai Lama.

Xinhua yesterday released a long article written under the pseudonym 'Yi Duo'.

It quoted an unnamed suspect - purportedly linked to the Lhasa unrest - as having confessed to the Chinese police details of how the 'Dalai clique' plotted and incited the worst anti-Chinese riots in Tibet in two decades.

The suspect was said to have claimed that the 'security department' of the government-in-exile had asked him to hand out leaflets advocating a 'Tibetan people's uprising movement' to monks and civilians in Tibet.

That, the suspect said, had led to the March14 riots in the Tibetan capital which Beijing says killed 22 people, most of them ethnic Han and Muslim Chinese migrants. Tibetan exiles put the overall death toll at 140.

The Xinhua article also claimed that as Lhasa smouldered after riots on March 14, the 'Dalai clique' met and reached decisions to mobilise all monasteries in Tibet to take to the streets, to spread the unrest to other ethnic Tibetan areas, and to fund what the author termed a 'decisive battle against the Chinese government'.

Spelling out events in great detail, the Xinhua article alleged that the government-in-exile sought to use the Beijing Olympics to make a breakthrough in striving for Tibet's autonomy and for the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet.

Drawing a firm link between the unrest within Tibet and the campaigns by exile groups abroad - a link rejected by some scholars familiar with events - the Xinhua article recounted how exile groups launched an 'uprising movement' in India in January, aimed at raising the profile of the Tibetan cause this year. Their activities included a symbolic march from Dharamsala, the seat of the government-in-exile, to Tibet, starting on March 10 - the anniversary of a 1959 failed Tibetan uprising against the Chinese.

As to why the violence in Lhasa broke on March 14, Xinhua offered this explanation: 'When the monks' efforts to spread unrest failed, violent rioters came.'

Most scholars note the recent wave of protests in Tibet - which spread to Tibetan-inhabited towns and rural areas in the nearby provinces of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai - erupted from long-time grievances over Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama, who has condemned the violence and called for an independent probe, said as much in a 1,700-word Appeal To The Chinese People issued last Friday.

Restating his support for the Games, he said Beijing's ongoing propaganda war 'could sow the seeds of racial tension with unpredictable long-term consequences'.

Beijing's latest salvo followed unconfirmed reports of unrest in Lhasa on Saturday, as Beijing-based diplomats ended their government-organised tour of the city.

In a separate report yesterday, the state-run Tibet Daily said that Tibet's top official for minority and religious affairs Tenzin Namgyal had been replaced. While this raises suspicions that he was the first political casualty of the riots, observers note that he was listed among several others removed or redesignated at a recent session of the local parliament, suggesting it could have been a routine reshuffling.

simcy@sph.com.sg