Former party secretary Hu Yaobang died 10 years ago after being sacked from his post for his reformist ideas.

The London-based Tibetan Information Network (TIN) said Hu was the only Chinese leader to have held out the promise of change for Tibet which has been under Chinese rule since 1951.

In a speech to 4,500 Communist party cadres in Lhasa on May 29, 1980, "Hu made a clear and unequivocal apology for the failures of policy in Tibet and acknowleged that the party was to blame," the group said in a statement sent to AFP here.

Hu criticised cadres for wasting money earmarked for the region and made six general policy recommendations including implementing regional autonomy, reducing tax burdens, reviving the Tibetan economy, developing agriculture and animal husbandry and withdrawing a large number of Chinese cadres from Tibet.

"Hu's willingness to acknowledge that mistakes had been made, to apologise for them and to attempt changes in policy which, if fully implemented would have radically affected Tibetan society, was unprecedented," TIN said in its statement.

But Hu's proposals were later abandoned and he was sidelined from the party core, TIN said.

"Any hopes that may have been raised by this speech with regard to greater autonomy, control by Tibetans or development of Tibetan culture by and for Tibetans have since been dashed," the statement added.

China maintains that it liberated Tibet in 1951 from a feudal system where the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama presided over a domain of serfs kept in poverty and servitude.

The Dalai Lama fled the region when an uprising in 1959 was brutally suppressed by Chinese troops and has set up a government in exile in northern India. He has continously called for dialogue with Beijing to allow Tibet autonomy and preserve the Tibetan culture.

Almost thirty years after Chinese troops marched into the region, Hu told party cadres in Lhasa in 1980 that conditions in Tibet were "not absolutely wonderful."

"There has been no great improvement in the lives of the people of Tibet and there are even some places where there has even been a bit of a decline," Hu said, according to a translation of his speech provided by TIN.

"Comrades of the central committee ... on hearing this news, felt very bad, and felt that our party has let the Tibetan people down."

Hu's death on April 15, 1989 was one of the catalysts for six weeks of pro-democracy protests across China -- the biggest challenge to face the Communist party in four decades in power.

Dissidents and Marxists alike are planning to mark the 10th anniversary of Hu's death on Thursday.

The Tibetan Information Network said: "For Tibetans, Hu Yaobang is particularly remembered as being the only Chinese leader to make an official apology to them for the actions of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet."

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Last updated: 14-April-99