By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu, July 1 (IANS) Fretting at the resumption of anti-China protests in Nepal by Tibetan refugees, Beijing has sent a delegation to Kathmandu to seek support from the new government of Nepal to quell them.

Zhang Jiuhuan, a former ambassador to Nepal and current politburo member of the Communist Party of China, Wednesday met Nepal’s new Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala to register his government’s concern at the fresh eruption of protests calling for a ‘Free Tibet’.

Zhang arrived in Kathmandu Wednesday leading a high-level delegation, five days after Nepal police arrested nearly six dozen Tibetans at the Nepal-China border.

The Tibetan group, that included eight women, were trying to cross the Nepal border and reach the Tibet Autonomous Region now controlled by China. They had planned to stage a public demonstration that would draw attention to the ‘violation of human rights’ in the former Buddhist kingdom.

Though they were prevented by Nepal police from entering Tibet and brought back to Kathmandu, the slogans they raised for a ‘Free Tibet’ received wide media attention, much to Beijing’s anger.

Koirala, foreign ministry sources said, had assured the visitor that Nepal was committed to preventing anti-China activities on its soil.

China is also concerned at some Nepal lawmakers’ recent visit to Dharamshala in India, where exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama has his official residence.

The lawmakers reportedly told the Tibetan diaspora in the Indian town that after their return to Kathmandu, they would ask the coalition government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal to allow the office of the Dalai Lama’s representative in Nepal to re-open.

The office, started after 1959, was shut down in 2005 after then king Gyanendra sought the support of the Chinese government for his coup.

The lawmakers are also said to have promised that they would lobby the government to issue fresh identity cards to the Tibetans who have been seeking refuge in Nepal.

Only about 20,000 Tibetans, who fled their homeland during the Chinese annexation of Tibet in the 1950s, were registered as refugees by the Nepal government. Hundreds more have been denied IDs after China said there were no Tibetan refugees, only ‘illegal immigrants’ who should be dealt with accordingly.

Beijing has stepped up overtures to the new government of Nepal and currently, a delegation of Nepali authors and writers is visiting China at the invitation of the Chinese government.

Zhang also issued an invitation to Koirala and her father, former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who remains one of the key players in Nepal’s politics, to visit China.

Earlier, the prime minister has also been invited by Beijing to visit China.