Dalai Lama admitted to hospital with "discomfort"

By Bappa Majumdar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, has been admitted to a hospital in India with "abdominal discomfort" but there was no cause for concern, doctors said on Thursday.

The spiritual leader, who cancelled two foreign trips after he complained of fatigue was "cheerful" after reaching the hospital in Mumbai, a hospital spokesman said.

"He has just been admitted for abdominal discomfort, investigation will commence tomorrow morning and there is no cause for concern," Mohan Rajan, the spokesman, said from Mumbai.

"We cannot tell you for how many days he will stay in the hospital at the moment."

The Nobel Peace Prize winner returned to Dharamsala, the north Indian town where Tibet's self-proclaimed government-in-exile is based, on Sunday after a two-week visit to France.

The visit focused mainly on lectures on Buddhism, but during it he also criticised Chinese policies in Tibet.

He told Le Monde in an interview that Chinese troops had fired on protesters in eastern Tibet on Aug. 18, and that since protests against Chinese rule broke out in March, 400 people had been killed in the Lhasa area alone.

On Wednesday an aide told Reuters the 73-year-old was due to travel to Mumbai, India's financial centre, to undergo "routine medical tests" in hospital.