Chinese state media accused the Dalai Lama of closing the door on talks over Tibet’s future, an apparent response to rising international calls for Beijing to negotiate with Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader.

In a lengthy article, Xinhua News Agency on Sunday cited past actions and statements attributed to the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner that it said contradicted or undermined his calls for negotiations. “It was the Dalai Lama clique that closed the door of dialogue,” Xinhua said, using China’s standard term for the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The statement came a day before the arrival in Beijing of the Olympic torch that has become a magnet for Tibetan activists and other groups seeking to use the Beijing Olympic Games in August to draw attention to their cause.

Beijing has imposed a massive military clampdown in Tibet and other areas of China inhabited by Tibetans. But a new protest was reported to have broken out on Saturday in Tibet’s regional capital, Lhasa, as diplomats wrapped up a visit organised by Beijing in an effort to blunt criticism of its crackdown on the unrest.

According to the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, the demonstration began at about 2 pm on Saturday at Lhasa’s Ramoche monastery and lasted several hours. Calls to Ramoche rang unanswered on Sunday and receptionists at hotels in the area said the monastery was closed to the public. Protests also took place at the central Jokhang Temple, the group said, a major Buddhist site in Lhasa.

Several hundred people took part in the protest at the Jokhang, the US-based broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported. It cited an unidentified witness as saying there were fist fights. The International Campaign for Tibet said text messages were sent to cell phones in Lhasa yesterday by the Lhasa Municipal Police urging citizens to “obey the law” as security checks were being carried out. This caused “some frightened citizens whose identification (documents) are not clear to run away,” the text message said, according to their translation.

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