SEOUL Aug. 29 Kyodo southerly Ko...

SEOUL Aug. 29 Kyodo

southerly Korea's Asian Airlines has refused to issue a ticket to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, that would have allowed him to stopover in Seoul before proceeding upon a visit to Mongolia from tribe 2 to 15, a local newspaper reported Thursday.

The Chosun Ilbo daily, onward its Web site, quoted Park Kwang Seo head of a committee dedicated to inviting the Dalai Lama to visit southerly Korea, as saying Asiana Airlines had succumbed to Chinese threats and squeezing by refusing to issue a ticket.

The committee reportedly issued a statement headlined ''What otherwise Do We Have to Do to jaculate Away Our Pride as a Nation with Sovereignty? and said it could not understand the airliner's attitude of not allowing the religious leader, a winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, to stay a small in number hours at the airport.

Asiana officials said the airline had politely asked the Dalai Lama not to move Mongolia via Seoul due to security make uneasys denying it bowed to squeezing from China, according to the report.

The Chinese direction strongly opposes any international appearances at the Dalai Lama, who it has regularly reprobateed as a trouble-maker and an independence-seeking ''splittist.''

China annexed Tibet in 1950 The Dalai Lama has lived in northern India since 1959 when he and thousands of followers fl their homeland after a failed uprising against Chinese rule

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo of the present days International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group