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Arrests made in fires that killed 12 in Tibet

BEIJING - Suspects accused of setting fire to shops in Tibet, causing the deaths of 12 people during antigovernment violence, have been taken into custody, state media said yesterday.

BEIJING - Suspects accused of setting fire to shops in Tibet, causing the deaths of 12 people during antigovernment violence, have been taken into custody, state media said yesterday.

The suspects were responsible for deadly arson attacks on three shops in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa - including a clothing outlet where five young women were burned to death - and one in nearby Dagze county, the Tibet Daily newspaper said.

The government has highlighted the burning deaths as a way to show that Tibetans were responsible for the violence that mainly targeted Han Chinese.

China says 18 civilians, most of them Han Chinese, died in the riots, but Tibet's government-in-exile has said 140 Tibetans were killed during the protests.

A total of 414 suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the March 14 riots, and an additional 298 people have turned themselves in, the report said, citing Jiang Zaiping, vice chief of the Public Security Bureau in Lhasa.

The protests began peacefully March 10 when Tibetan monks from Lhasa's main monasteries marched to commemorate a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. The demonstrations exploded into violence four days later.

The Lhasa uprising sparked similar actions in recent weeks by ethnic Tibetans in neighboring provinces, becoming the most sustained challenge to Beijing's rule in the Himalayan region since 1989.

Sympathy protests have gathered force in other countries.

Indian police barred about 300 demonstrators - mostly Tibetans - from marching to the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi yesterday, where they planned to submit more than 1.4 million names from an Internet petition calling on China to act with restraint in Tibet.

China has consistently blamed the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, and his supporters for masterminding the Lhasa protests and accused them of trying to sabotage the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics in an effort to promote Tibetan independence.

If the Dalai Lama "really wishes to be a simple Buddhist monk, it's high time for him to stop playing politics and cheating people, Westerners in particular, with his hypocritical 'autonomy' claims,' " said a commentary published yesterday by the Xinhua news agency.

"The self-proclaimed spiritual leader has obviously forgotten his identity, abused his religion, and played too much politics," it said.

Olympic Flame Is Relit in Beijing

An elaborate

ceremony

to rekindle the Olympic torch went off without

a hitch yesterday in closely guarded Tiananmen Square - with hundreds of cheering women in brightly colored T-shirts, flower-toting children

and confetti.

A flame - carried

from Greece in a lantern on an Air China flight -

was used to reignite

the Olympic torch.

About 5,000 people

attended the invitation- only event. Roads near the square were closed, nearby subway stations were shut, and police barricades kept back thousands of people about a half-mile away.

Today the flame begins

a monthlong, 21-city global journey. Protests are expected as the torch goes to London, Paris and San Francisco. Even stops in Kazakhstan tomorrow and Turkey

on Thursday could be flash points.

- Associated Press