Top Tibetan politician dies in Beijing

CHINA: Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, a leading politician who once was a member in the cabinet of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, but later joined China's military and government, died Wednesday, state press said.

Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme died in Beijing at the age of 99, according to China Central Television. No cause of death was given.

Jigme was born in Lhasa in February 1910 and was a politician in Tibet's Chamdo region when he served on the Dalai Lama's cabinet.

After China's takeover of Tibet, he was a top commander in China's military in Tibet from 1952-1959 and later a vice chairman of China's parliament from 1964 to 1993, his official state biography said.

According to Tsering Shakya's history of modern Tibet, "The Dragon in the Land of Snows," Jigme was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan armed forces when China's military moved into the Chamdo region in 1950.

His army of largely Tibetan serfs were quickly defeated, but were treated kindly by the Chinese military and within a year Jigme became a top commander of China's forces in Tibet.

In 1951, Jigme as a representative for the Dalai Lama signed the "Seventeen Point Agreement" with China that agreed to Beijing's sovereignty over Tibet in exchange for guarantees of autonomy and religious freedom.

The agreement was later voided after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet following an unsuccessful uprising in 1959.

The Dalai Lama, exiled in India since the failed uprising, has long maintained that the autonomy promised in the 1951 agreement has never been realised and has continued to demand greater autonomy for his homeland.

China views the Dalai Lama as a separatist bent on establishing an independent Tibet, charges that the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner has repeatedly denied. Beijing, Thursday, AFP