Tibet would be reopened to foreign tourists from Wednesday, more than three months after the violent anti-China protests rocked the remote Himalayan region. "The reception of overseas tourists will resume in the Tibet Autonomous Region on Wednesday," a senior regional Tourism Administration official said. Travel agencies in Tibet had stopped receiving tourists after the Lhasa riots citing safety concerns. The tourism market reopened to domestic tourists in late April and to tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan on May 1. Monk-led anti-government protests, the severest in two decades, had led to violence in Lhasa causing 20 deaths and to a crackdown by Beijing to quell the unrest that rattled the Communist leadership. Two Swedish tourists would arrive in the Tibetan capital on Wednesday and four others from Singapore on Sunday, Tanor, deputy director of the regional Tourism Administration, was quoted as saying in Lhasa by official Xinhua news agency. Riots broke out in Lhasa on March 14 when the anniversary to mark the failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 was being observed. China has blamed the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, for the riots but he has denied his role. China held the Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay for about three hours in Lhasa on Saturday amidst heavy security. Tibet has remained out of bounds for foreign journalists barring the government-controlled and monitored trips, the latest being one to cover the Tibet torch relay in Lhasa. "We will continue to work hard to stabilise the situation in Tibet," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters in Beijing while assuring that efforts would be made to throw open Tibet to foreign journalists ‘at an early date’. "We totally understand your aspiration to go to Tibet and we will help you to make this happen at an early date."
