The National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, on Thursday strongly condemned a U.S. Congress resolution on Tibet.
"It (the resolution) is a gross interference in China's domestic affairs and hurts the Chinese people's feelings. We are strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to it," the NPC Foreign Affairs Committee said in a statement.
The U.S. House of Representatives, regardless of China's stance, approved an anti-China resolution on Tibet, which distorts the facts of Tibet's democratic reform and glorifies the Dalai Lama, slandering the religious policy of the Chinese government, the statement said.
The resolution severely runs counter to the norms of international relations and grossly intervenes in China's internal affairs, the statement said.
Tibet is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory and Tibetan affairs are purely China's domestic affairs, the statement said, adding issues related to Tibet concern China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and is China's core interests.
"The NPC and the Chinese people have all along been opposed to any country and any people intervening in China's internal affairs using the Tibet issue," said the statement.
Also on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Zhaoxu urged the resolution's backers to correct their mistakes immediately, stop interfering in China's internal affairs using the Tibet issue, and stop harming Sino-U.S. relations.
(Xinhua News Agency March 12, 2009)