News and Views on Tibet

Dalai Lama’s envoys ”build trust” on China trip

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NEW DELHI, June 10 — A series of meetings between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and senior Chinese officials have helped clear some misunderstandings between the two sides on the Tibet issue, the exiled spiritual leader’s spokesman said on Tuesday.

”They had forward-looking discussions with Chinese officials. We would describe the visit as successful. It is the continuation of the contact started in September last year,” Tenzin Taklha, the Dalai Lama’s deputy secretary, told Reuters.

”Right now, both sides are focused on building trust and dispelling any misunderstandings,” he said on the phone from the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala. ”We hope to continue this contact and build on it.”

A four-member team led by special envoy Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari returned to India earlier this week after a two-week visit to Shanghai, Beijing and parts of Tibet.

The visit was part of an ongoing contact-building process between China and the Dalai Lama’s representatives that began last year when the Tibetan god-king’s envoys visited China. That trip was the first direct contact between them since 1993.

Analysts say the re-establishment of contacts between China and the Dalai Lama’s representatives reflects a slight softening in Beijing’s position as it tests the waters for some kind of political solution and tries to improve its image overseas.

Last week, the Dalai Lama said in Copenhagen he was encouraged by China’s more positive attitude on the Tibet issue.

The Dalai Lama has run a government in exile in Dharamsala since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He seeks greater autonomy for the Himalayan region.

Beijing, which imposed Communist rule on Tibet after its troops entered in 1950, established direct contact with the Dalai Lama in 1979 and allowed him to send representatives on four fact-finding missions, the last of which was in 1985.

But it suspended official dialogue, mostly through the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, in 1993 and had maintained only sporadic and unofficial contacts until last year.

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