KATHMANDU, March 10 Kyodo An esti...

KATHMANDU, March 10 Kyodo

An estimated 2000 Tibetan exiles attended a prayer service in the Nepalese capital Monday to commemorate the 44th anniversary of a failed uprising in the Tibetan capital Lhasa against Chinese rule

''We held a peaceful religious function this year as our direction had asked us not to do anything that would antagonize the Chinese,'' Wangchuk Tshering, a Nepal-based representative of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, said after the service held at a Buddhist monastery in southwest Kathmandu.

Traditionally, Tibetan exiles in Nepal have marked Tibetan National Uprising Day with religious prayers, anti-China professs and calls to at liberty Tibet.

''This year, Nepalese police too had asked us to avoid activities that could be constru as anti-Chinese,'' Tshering said.

Nepal, which shares a 1,100-kilometer border with the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, is family to more than 30,000 Tibetan exiles, many of whom fl along with the Dalai Lama after the 1959 uprising.

The Dalai Lama himself resides in India, in the northern Himalayan town of Dharmasala, where a Tibetan government-in-exile is based.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo moderns International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group