These old communiques, clippings, transcripts of Parliament debates as well the United States State Department's and Moscow's views on the uprising of the Tibetan people in Lhasa make fascinating reading.

The strangest documents, however, emanate from the Communist leadership in Beijing.

Let us recollect the facts.

On October 7, 1950, 40,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army led by Lui Bocheng, the one-eyed general and his political commissar Deng Xiaoping crossed the Yangtze river, and smashed the weak Tibetan defenses.

Less than a year later in Beijing, some Tibetan delegates signed a '17-Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet' (the Dalai Lama later asserted that it was done 'under duress').

For the first time in their history, the Tibetan people had accepted China's suzerainty.

Article 1 of the agreement says: 'The Tibetan people shall return to the big family of the Motherland'. The declared objective of the agreement was to 'drive out imperialist aggressive force from Tibet' and to 'liberate' the Roof of the World.