June 14, 2000
Beijing has asked the World Bank to delay its response to a critical independent review of a loan to relocate poor mainland farmers on traditional Tibetan lands, raising new doubts about whether the controversial project will go ahead. The bank said Beijing had asked for a one-week delay to allow time for "additional discussions" with World Bank management about the US$160 million (HK$1.25 billion) loan, which would resettle 60,000 Chinese farmers in Qinghai Province.
Chinese officials say the project will help ease poverty among subsistence farmers in the area, but Tibetan exile groups say it is cultural genocide.
The bank's independent inspection panel concluded in an unpublished report that the international lender ignored its own environmental guidelines as it raced to approve the cash before July 1999, the cut-off date for Beijing to qualify for low-interest World Bank loans.
"Trying to tinker with this project is the wrong way to go," said John Ackerly of the International Campaign for Tibet. "We are extremely disappointed the bank would be willing to move forward under any circumstances. We do not think the bank should be involved in moving Chinese people into a Tibetan area, any more than it should moving Brazilians from the city to the rainforest where there are already indigenous people."
Bank sources said management, which responded on Monday to the highly critical inspection panel report, wanted Beijing to carry out detailed new environmental assessments on the impact of the project before giving the already approved loan the green light. The sources said the bank wanted Beijing to allow independent experts into the area - something that Beijing might see as infringing its sovereignty.
Tibet was annexed in 1951 and is ruled from Beijing. World Bank staff initially appeared unaware of the political implications when it began assessing what they called the China Western Poverty Reduction Project. Despite criticism from Tibetan exile groups and others, the bank's board approved the loan last June, against the wishes of the United States and Germany.
The board is expected to discuss things again next month, although if Beijing objects strongly, and management declines to amend its recommendations, the project could be dropped.
"The management report was prepared over six very gruelling weeks by a team from across the bank," said Peter Stephens, the bank's press officer for Asia. "We have put together the best independent assessment we can on what it will take to proceed. We are prepared to stand by it."
Many bank officials admit privately that staff cut corners as they struggled to win board approval of the project before steadily rising incomes robbed the mainland of the right to qualify for concessionary loans.
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