TOKYO, Mar 7, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) China has pressured Tokyo's city authorities to snub a request from the Falungong spiritual movement to be considered a non-profit group, officials said Tuesday.

Tokyo's metropolitan government must make a decision on the application Thursday.

A Chinese embassy official visited the Tokyo city government twice last year to discuss the request from Falungong, which is banned in China, said Tokyo's international affairs section chief Hisakazu Nikaido.

In his first meeting with Tokyo city authorities last November, the Chinese embassy official said: "Falungong is a heresy. It causes a lot of problems in China," Nikaido told AFP.

"We would like you to examine this case with utmost care," the Chinese official was quoted as saying.

"When he came back in December, I think he said almost the same thing," said Nikaido. "He asked us to give the Falungong case a proper judgement. He told this in Japanese verbally, he did not hand any letter to us."

Keiko Kina, manager of Tokyo city government's bureau of citizens' and cultural affairs, said all such applications were posted publically before a final decision.

"I cannot comment on how the Tokyo metropolitan government will decide" the matter," she said.

According to a report in the Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo's outspoken Governor Shintaro Ishihara believed the Chinese request amounted to outside interference in the city's affairs.

Ishihara is a frequent critic of China. After he was inaugurated in April last year, he declared, "I do not like or approve of a nation under a communist dictatorship." ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)