Kathmandu: Tibetan exiles have suspended protests in Nepal's capital after the government threatened to prolong detentions to prevent unrest during poll next week, activists said today.

"We have called off our anti-China protest in Kathmandu in view of the upcoming elections in Nepal," Tupden Tenzing Japhel, chairman of the Nepal Tibetan Volunteer Youth for Free Tibet group told AFP.

For the past two weeks, exiles have protested daily outside Chinese diplomatic offices against a crackdown by authorities following deadly unrest in their homeland last month.

China's envoy today told Nepal to be firmer with the protests.

"We have received warnings from the home ministry saying that they will keep us in jail for days if (we are) arrested," the activist said.

Tibetan exiles in Nepal have been detained daily in large numbers in a cat-and-mouse game with security forces, who release them after several hours. Many have been coming back the next day to protest.

Nepal is due to go to the polls on April 10 in elections that are a central strand of a 2006 peace deal between the government and former rebel Maoists.

The polls will elect a body that will probably abolish the world's last Hindu monarchy and write a new constitution. "We will continue our protests from April 11," Jamphel, the youth activist said.

Nepal is home to at least 20,000 Tibetans, who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet following a failed uprising against the Chinese.

Source : PTI