BEIJING – China on Thursday denied as “misleading” reports that it had entered into formal “negotiations” with the envoys of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama to resolve the ‘Tibet issue.’
“To my knowledge in recent years, we didn’t have any formal talks with the Dalai Lama,” Zhuang Cong Sheng, a senior official of the United Front department, which hosted the Dalai Lama’s envoys in late May, told reporters here at the first press conference undertaken by his office.
Zhuang, who is the director of the policy studies office of the United Front department under the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) said that some “Tibetan compatriots” who visited the region for sight-seeing and tourism, had some “contacts” with his department.
“In this process there were some contacts between them and the officials of the (Chinese) government so there was this misunderstanding that there was negotiation between Dalai Lama and Chinese government,” he claimed when asked to comment on the past meetings between the two sides.
“And I believe that, the fact is that those Tibetan compatriots are not representatives who would have contacts with the Chinese government on behalf of the Dalai Lama and indeed we have some channels to have communications with the Dalai Lama,” he said, while attempting to downplay the significance of the visit of a four-member team led by special envoy Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s representative in New York, visited Beijing as well as Tibet for two weeks.
