Taipei- Exiled Chinese dissidents plan to launch a series of activities intended to pressure China to apologize for the June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, a Taiwan-based Chinese dissident said Thursday.

Wuer Kaixi, one of the student leaders of the 1989 protests who now lives in Taiwan, said the activities would kick off next week and climax on June 3 or June 4 with a news conference in the US capital.

At the Washington news conference, Wang Dan, another of the protest leaders who now lives in the United States, plans to release a "white paper" on the Tiananmen incident, he said.

The white paper would try to prove that there was no need for China to use force to suppress the student protests and would demand China apologize to and compensate the family members of the victims of the crackdown.

The 1989 pro-democracy movement in Beijing, which lasted for months and gave Chinese the brief hope that the government would introduce political reforms, ended in bloodshed on June 4, 1989.

China's leaders used tanks and soldiers to drive away the hunger-striking students camping out on Tiananmen Square, allegedly killing hundreds of them.

The Chinese government has declared the Tiananmen confrontation a counterrevolutionary incident and insisted no one was killed, but the Tiananmen Mothers Campaign, founded by relatives of the Tiananmen victims, has drafted a list of 155 people who were killed.

The group has also been demanding China apologize for the crackdown and compensate family members of those killed.

After the suppression of the pro-democracy movement, many Chinese pro-democracy activists and students leaders fled China to avoid being arrested, including Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi. (dpa)