pissing everyone off

Finally, China, India and Tibetans can agree on something...

The Miss Tibet beauty pageant is in its fifth year, a budget contest in small town of McLeodganj that attracts only a handful of contestants but plenty of controversy.

Not surprisingly, the contest has irritated the Chinese, whose troops entered Tibet in 1950 and abhor the refugees' "splittist" agenda.

It has also irked conservative Tibetan Buddhists -- the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile here once famously called it "un-Tibetan" and "aping Western culture."

This year it even managed to irritate the Indians -- one young woman serving with a high-altitude Tibetan unit in the Indian army was forced to withdraw on the eve of the contest.

In an attempt to generate a little more publicity, the organizers threw the controversial "swimwear round" open for public viewing for the first time this year.

Anything that promotes the Tibetan cause is worth supporting, says president B. Tsering, even if she draws the line at Tibetan girls parading around in bikinis to a crowd of leering men.