NEW DELHI, June 24 — Tibetan exiles in India believe improved relations between India and China would help negotiations between the Dalai Lama and Beijing over Tibet, a Tibetan spokesman said on Tuesday.
The statement came a day after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, on a visit to China to forge closer bilateral ties, signed a joint declaration with Premier Wen Jiabao to resolve long-standing border disputes and boost trade.
”Vajpayee’s visit will definitely pave the way for talks between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership,” Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile in India, told Reuters.
”Our argument is that relations between India and China based on mutual trust will enable India to play the role of a honest mediator to help resolve the Tibet issue,” Samphel said by phone from the northern Indian hill station of Dharamasala, where the government-in-exile is based.
Vajpayee’s visit is the first by an Indian prime minister to China in a decade. Tibet has been a key irritant in ties between the Asian giants who fought a border war in 1962.
Beijing has long resented India’s decision to give shelter to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, following a 1959 revolt against Chinese rule. About 100,000 Tibetan exiles also live across India.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Beijing that India had explicitly accepted that the Tibet Autonomous Region was a part of China.
New Delhi agrees Tibet is an autonomous region of China, but the declaration makes India’s position clearer and meets a key Beijing demand.
