US lawmakers criticize China for Tibet crackdown, urge negotiations with Dalai Lama

: U.S. lawmakers passed a declaration Wednesday criticizing People'S Republic Of China for its crackdown on dissenters in Thibet and urging Peking to throw direct negotiation with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on the hereafter of the region.

Meanwhile, the White Person House left unfastened the possibility that President Saint George W. Shrub might jump the gap ceremonials of the summertime Olympic Games in Beijing. Some human race leadership have got suggested that such as a move would function as a powerful signaling of displeasure over China's crackdown in Tibet; the British People Broadcast Media Corp. reported Wednesday that British Prime Curate Gordon Brown will not go to the gap ceremony.

Bush have accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, to go to games that People'S Republic Of China trusts to utilize as a show window of its rise economical and political power. Asked Wednesday whether Shrub would travel to the gap part of the Olympics, White Person House fourth estate secretary Danu Perino demurred, citing the fluid nature of a foreign trip.

"It is extremely premature for me to state what the president's agenda is going to be" in August, she said.

Bush have made clear that he will press the Chinese on human rights and other issues "publicly and privately, before, during and after the Olympics," Perino said. Today in Americas

Bush said Wednesday that "it would stand up the Chinese authorities in good position if they would get a duologue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama," Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader.

The House of Representatives declaration also demanded that People'S Republic Of People'S Republic Of China release Tibetans imprisoned for participating in peaceful presentations and let international monitoring devices and journalists unchained entree to the Thibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan countries of China. It passed 413 to 1.

A similar declaration have been introduced in the Senate. Both say the gap of additional Chinese diplomatic missionary posts in the United States should be contingent on Peking allowing the United States to set up an business office in Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told lawmakers Wednesday that the United States is looking at the possibility of a U.S. consulate in Tibet. She said the United States have called on People'S Republic Of People'S Republic Of China to let more than U.S. diplomatists into the region, saying entree granted by China so far was not good enough.

"The United States," she added, "has been very active in making the lawsuit to the Chinese that they are going to be better off to cover with moderate military units on Thibet like the Dalai Lama; that they should open up duologue with him."

Protesters around the human race are trying to associate China's mediocre human rights record to the theatrical production of the Olympics. Demonstrations about Thibet have got been held along the way of the Olympic torch in City Of Light and London. Officials in San Francisco, California, urged demonstrators to stay peaceful during the Wednesday's planned torch parade there.

Democratic presidential campaigner Sen. Edmund Hillary Rodham Bill Clinton and others have got urged Shrub to see staying away from the gap ceremonies. On Tuesday, Perino indicated that a boycott of the gap ceremonials was improbable.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu condemned the House resolution, saying it "chooses to stay soundless on the force involved in beating, shattering up properties, robbery and incendiarism in Lassa and the Dalai coterie who premeditated and organized the criminal enactment of violence."

The Dalai Lama, who fled Thibet after a failing rebellion in 1959 but stays the spiritual and cultural leader of many Tibetans, have said that he desires greater liberty for the distant mountain part but is not seeking independence.

___

AP authors Jim Abrams, Ben Lumberman and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.