The Dalai Lama responded to charges from China that he orchestrated deadly riots in Lhasa to sabotage the Olympics with a pledge to resign as temporal leader of Tibet’s Buddhist people if the violence — on both sides — did not stop.

Police and paramilitary squads, firing teargas to disperse gathering crowds, raided dozens of homes across Lhasa to arrest suspected demonstrators who failed to surrender by a deadline of midnight on Monday. Sources close to the Government told The Times that 900 people had been detained over the weekend. The Chinese media reported that 105 people had surrendered to the police.

Residents of the Tibetan capital tried to return to a semblance of daily life after the riots in which Tibetans opposed to Beijing rule stabbed and hacked to death ethnic Han Chinese and burnt shops and schools. However, the unrest spilled over into more Tibetan communities in neighbouring provinces, leaving several dead and wreaking yet more devastation.

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, said at his annual news conference that ample evidence existed to prove that the unrest had been “organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique”. He charged that claims by the Dalai Lama that he wanted autonomy and not independence for the Himalayan region he fled in 1959 during a failed uprising against Chinese rule were nothing but lies.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman even said that the Dalai Lama should stand trial. But, in one of his most powerful and significant statements, the Nobel laureate offered to resign his temporal position as leader of the Tibetans, saying that independence was out of the question.

“I say to China and the Tibetans — don’t commit violence.” Much of the violence over the last week appears to have been committed by furious young Tibetans although Chinese security forces, after holding back at first to reassert control in Lhasa, have begun to exact retribution.

China says that 13 people were killed in Lhasa. Tibet’s government-in-exile in Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama has made his home since 1959, put the death toll at 99.

The 72-year-old monk, the 14th reincarnation known as the Ocean of Wisdom, told a news conference in Dharamsala yesterday: “Whether we like it or not, we have to live together side by side.”

He issued his strongest statement against the frenzy of racist violence that rocked Lhasa on Friday. “We must oppose Chinese policy but not the Chinese. Not on a racist basis.”

He denied the Chinese charges against him and invited the Chinese to check his person, saying: “If things become completely out of control then my only option is to resign.”

Technically, the Dalai Lama cannot resign because he is revered as the reincarnation of his predecessor but he has often suggested that he will not return again. His comments appeared to be designed to reassert his moral authority and to quell the unrest.

Witnesses to the arrests yesterday said that the police appeared to have carefully chosen their targets. In one residential area near the Potala Palace, a group of police and paramilitary officers raided an apartment block and dragged out a man aged about 50, believed to be a civil servant, along with two young men.

The paramilitary officers fired three rounds of teargas to disperse a crowd that had swollen rapidly, witnesses said. One said: “The man came out with his head held high. He was proud and seemed to show he was unafraid. They beat him with clubs.”

The violence spilled over into other areas. In Maqu in northwestern Gansu, which borders Tibet, large numbers of ethnic Tibetans took to the streets on Sunday, burning shops and businesses.

From Monday night all Government offices had been ordered to remain on duty around the clock. A government order said: “Without a notice, no one may leave their posts.”

Protesters hung pro-Tibetan slogans around the necks of statues at an exhibition of China’s Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum. Visitors applauded as Martin Wyness, 50, and Mark Trepte, 47, both from Hereford, put placards on the statues which read: “Stop killing Tibetans” and “Boycott the Chinese Olympics”.

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