DHARAMSALA – Tibet’s government-in-exile, which is allowed refuge by India, has welcomed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s decision to visit China next month.
“Good relations between India and China will provide better prospects for the Tibetan issue to be resolved,” said Sonam Norbu Dagpo, spokesman for the government-in-exile.
“The visit is a welcome step when the world’s two most populous countries are coming together, which will create better understanding, mutual trust and promote developments in the two countries,” he said.
Tibetan prime minister-in-exile Samdhong Rinpoche earlier this year appealed for more active Indian involvement in dialogue between the Tibetans and Beijing.
In September, a delegation from Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama paid a landmark visit to China.
Vajpayee would be the first Indian prime minister in China in a decade.
Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, who himself visited Beijing last month, said Monday that Vajpayee would make the China visit in June, although exact dates have not been announced.
Relations between India and China have been warming in recent years, although Fernandes caused a diplomatic storm in 1998 by saying Beijing was the main cause of concern that led New Delhi to come out of the nuclear closet.
India and China fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962 and are still resolving territorial disputes.
The Dalai Lama and his followers fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and set up base in Dharamsala, a hill station in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
China has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since 1951.
