You've read about the press tour of 26 government-selected international correspondents to Lhasa this week.  Now it's the diplomats' turn.  Embassies are abuzz with plans for a diplomatic contingent to visit Lhasa imminently. Will they also witness unscripted moments, like the distraught Jokhang temple monks who disrupted this week's media trip with shouts of "Tibet is not free!"?

The envoys heading Lhasa-ward represent influential nations --  "all the heavyweights," as one diplomat put it -- such as the U.S., Britain, European Commission, Russia, a number of European countries and so forth.

In fact ambassadors in Beijing have been swiveling over Tibet for days now. The Chinese Foreign Ministry have been summoning them in -- even at odd hours, such as late at night or over the weekend -- for meetings and video showings of the Lhasa violence, now dubbed "the 3/14 beating, smashing, looting and burning incident". In it, the camera lingers on grim evidence of ethnic Chinese burned to death or injured by rioting Tibetans, such as the policeman who had a chunk of flesh cut out of his backside.

The other reason diplomats are being summoned is that Chinese authorities are urging their governments to publicly endorse Beijing's response to the Tibetan unrest.  Not long ago the Foreign Ministry announced that 100 nations had sent in such expressions of support.  Here's how this sort of thing happens: at one point Arab League nations' representatives were asked to come  to a meeting. The envoys were told Beijing's side of the story, then informed that China hoped other Muslim nations would publicly back China "the way Sudan has." 

"It's a fascinating peek into China's crisis management style," one diplomat told me recently, "Now we're beginning to see the tit for tat," such as in the case of Sudan where Chinese economic engagement is key to the Khartoum regime's survival. "We can see there's a price to be paid [for China's support]."

The one thing Beijing is desperate to nip in the bud is any move advocating a boycott of the Summer Olympics.  One diplomat has been summoned a handful of times to relay Beijing's warnings against any such measures. This week,  French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he could not rule out the possibility that he might boycott the Games opening ceremony on Aug. 8 due to the Tibet crackdown.

But U.S. President George Bush, who phoned Chinese president Hu Jintao this week to urge a resumption of dialogue with the Dalai Lama, maintains he'll attend the opening ceremony.  U.K. is not likely to make to many waves, either, as London is slated to host the next Summer Olympics. Once upon a time, the lights shone late into the night at the Foreign Ministry headquarters mainly for breaking developments related to big politically taboo topics known as the "three T's and an F" -- Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen, and the banned spiritual Falungong sect.  Now, or at least for the next few months, we should refer to "three T's, F and B" -- by adding "boycott" to the alphabet soup.