London, Mar 23: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has been barred from entering South Africa to take part in a peace conference linked to the 2010 football World Cup, plunging the country into a diplomatic row.

The decision was met with outrage by fellow Nobel peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the former President F. W. de Klerk, who are organising the conference on March 27 with the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee.

Johannesburg  - South Africa's popular archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu has threatened to boycott a peace conference planned for next week in Johannesburg after the South African government reportedly denied the Dalai Lama a visa, a newspaper said Sunday.

South Africa's Sunday Independent quoted an angry Tutu as saying: "If His Holiness's visa is refused, then I won't take part in the upcoming 2010 World Cup-related peace conference."

The Nobel Peace Prize winner accused South Africa, which has close ties with China, of "shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure" and said he was "ashamed."

Beijing- Police detained nearly 100 people after monks and lay Tibetans attacked a police station in China's western province of Qinghai, state media and Tibetan exiles said on Sunday.

Several hundred people, including about 100 monks from the Ragya monastery, attacked the Gyala township police station in Qinghai's remote Golok (Guoluo) prefecture from Saturday afternoon, the Chinese government's Xinhua news agency said.

Beijing  - A small bomb hit a local government compound in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of south-western China's Sichuan province, state media reported Tuesday.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted local officials as saying the government compound of Ganzi's Bogexi township was hit just after midnight Monday by a "bomb thrown by terrorists."

No casualties were reported in the attack, which was still under investigation by local police, the agency said.

Beijing  - Tibetans in China have staged several small protests in support of the exiled Dalai Lama in the last few days, including at least one on Saturday's anniversary of rioting last year, Tibetan exile groups reported on Sunday.

Police detained three young Tibetan men in Kardze (Ganzi) prefecture, in China's south-western province of Sichuan, after they shouted slogans including "long live the Dalai Lama" and "independence for Tibet" on Saturday, the Tibetan website Phayul. com quoted the Voice of Tibet radio station as saying.

Beijing  - China's state-appointed Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Panchen Lama, on Sunday urged Tibetans to "cherish the prosperity" and "bright future" offered by the ruling Communist Party.

"People living in Tibet should cherish their prosperity and happy lives today," the government's official Xinhua news agency quoted the Panchen Lama, 19-year-old Gyaincain Norbu, as saying.

While touring a government exhibition in Beijing to mark the "50th Anniversary of Democratic Reforms in Tibet," he promised to guide Tibetan Buddhists to "adapt to the country's socialist society."