MOSCOW, March 17 – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Monday on China to open talks with Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama following an eruption of violence in the region.
“We have really urged the Chinese over several years to find a way to talk with the Dalai Lama, who is a figure of authority, who is not a separatist, and to find a way to engage him and bring his moral weight to a more sustainable and better solution of the Tibet issue,” Rice said.
“I would hope they still find a way to do that” in the current crisis, she told reporters on her plane as she travelled to Moscow.
“There has been a kind of missed opportunity here for the Chinese to engage the moral authority of the Tibetan people,” she added.
Rice reiterated a US appeal for the Chinese authorities to show restraint in Tibet and said Washington was worried about the violence that has resulted in deaths and injuries in Lhasa, the region’s capital.
“They need to exercise restraint because this is a terrible situation,” Rice said.
Her comments came as China warned Tibetans involved in anti-Chinese protests to quickly surrender, and insisted it had not used deadly force in quelling the unrest, blaming rioters for murdering 13 people.
“They either burned or hacked to death 13 innocent civilians,” Tibet government chairman Qiangba Puncog said in Beijing as he gave the first detailed official account of the protests in the region’s capital, Lhasa.
Tibet’s government-in-exile said 80 Tibetans had been confirmed killed in the crackdown.
Amid international calls for China to show restraint, and reported threats from some athletes that they may boycott the Beijing Olympics over the unrest, Qiangba sought to portray the Chinese response as reserved.
“Throughout the process, (security forces) did not carry or use any lethal weapons,” he said.
“I can tell you as a responsible official that guns were absolutely not fired. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) was not involved at all in dealing with the incident.”
His comments contradicted many eyewitness accounts from local Chinese residents and foreign tourists in Lhasa that they saw and heard repeated gunfire there on Friday, the biggest day of protests, and over the weekend.
