Two terrorists killed and 15 arrested in January in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region had planned to attack the Beijing Olympic Games, the region's Party chief said yesterday.

Wang Lequan said police who smashed the terrorist gang in Urumqi, capital of the northwestern Xinjiang, seized knives, axes and books about terrorism.

"Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics," Wang told a press conference in Beijing.

The group was said to have collaborated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group the United Nations labeled a terrorist organization in 2002.

Wang's remarks came as authorities also revealed they had foiled an attempt to crash a passenger jet flying from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday.

Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, said the China Southern Airlines plane took off at 10:35 from Urumqi and was forced to land at Lanzhou, capital of neighboring Gansu Province, at 12:40 because "some people were trying to create an air disaster."

Air police stopped the attackers and all the passengers and crew on board are safe, Nur Bekri told reporters after a panel discussion at the ongoing session of the National People's Congress.

The plane arrived in Beijing on Saturday morning.

The suspects are in custody in Lanzhou and Nur Bekri said authorities are investigating "who the attackers are, where they are from and what's their background."

"But we can be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash," he added.

Wang said authorities will adopt a strike-first policy toward the "three evil forces" of terrorists, separatists and extremists in Xinjiang.

"We are prepared to strike them when the evil forces are planning their activities," Wang said.

"The Olympic Games slated for this August is a big event, but there are always a few people who plot sabotage. It is no longer a secret now.

"Those terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists are to be battered resolutely, no matter what ethnic group they are from," he said.

Last year police destroyed a terrorist training camp in the Pamir plateau, killing 18 terrorists and capturing 17.

Also yesterday, a senior official of the Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China said the region has crushed a series of conspiracies by the Dalai Lama clique in the past five years.

"We took timely, forceful and resolute measures in the past five years to crush a series of conspiracies by the Dalai clique," Ragdi, a Tibet-born vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, said on the sidelines of the annual parliamentary session.

In doing so, he said, Tibet battered the rampant acts of the secessionist forces and maintained social stability.