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Helen Clark has asked New Zealand's Ambassador in Beijing, Tony Browne, to convey New Zealand's "deep concern" about the violence in Tibet, and urged China to react "carefully" to protesters.
"In New Zealand we do respect the right of people to protest peacefully and we urge the Chinese authorities to react carefully and proportionately," she said yesterday.
Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister had been treading more cautiously, saying she was concerned but needed more facts.
But by the afternoon she was deeply concerned but said the facts about who started the violence might never be known.
"The New Zealand Government is deeply concerned at the violence in Tibet. We want to see an end to the violence. We have long urged the Chinese authorities to enter into a meaningful dialogue with representatives of the people of Tibet as we think that is the best way of achieving a lasting resolution of problems in Tibet."
Her comments came after China insisted yesterday that it had shown restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it claimed were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama to wreck Beijing's Olympic Games in August.
But even as the governor of Tibet said no lethal weapons had been used against protesters in the city of Lhasa, troops poured into neighbouring provinces to quell copycat protests and riots that erupted at the weekend.
Helen Clark also condemned those who linked New Zealand's nearly completed free trade agreement with China and the Tibet violence.
Green MP Keith Locke supported an uprising in Tibet, she said.
"It has never been any New Zealand Government's position that Tibet should be independent, so we start from a completely different point of view."
If New Zealand traded and entered into trade agreements only with countries with which it had identical interests and views, "then apart from Ireland and Switzerland and Scandinavia, it would be pretty thin pickings".
Responding to a TVNZ poll showing majority opposition - 49 per cent against to 39 per cent for - to a free trade agreement, she said people would be able to see what the benefits were.
"My own view is that in a straight two-way trade perspective the advantage is for New Zealand," she said.
But both countries had seen strategic advantages in the deal.
Mr Locke said Helen Clark's view that the trade agreement had nothing to do with human rights was "amoral and unacceptable".
A double standard was being applied to China, as New Zealand would not have a preferential deal with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe or with the military rulers of Myanmar.
A resident in Sichuan province's Aba prefecture said protests flared in two Tibetan schools yesterday, with hundreds of students from each facing police and troops.
On Sunday, exiled Tibetan representatives in Dharamsala, India, put the death toll from last week's protests in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, at 80.
But the Government chief in Tibet, Qiangba Puncog, said only 13 "innocent civilians" were killed and dozens of security personnel were injured in Lhasa when several days of monk-led protests broadened into riots on Friday in which houses and shops were burned and looted.
"I can say with all responsibility we did not use lethal weapons, including opening fire," he said.
Only tear gas and water cannon had been used to deal with the region's worst protests in nearly 20 years.
- ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY REUTERS
