HHDL Keen on Talks with China

By Peter Foster, South Asia Correspondent -- Feb 11, 2006

Hopes for warmer relations between China and the Dalai Lama have been raised by news that 200 Chinese nationals attended a prayer meeting in India with the exiled Tibetan ruler.

Tibet's government-in-exile, based in the Indian hilltown of Dharamsala, confirmed yesterday that China had issued a growing number of visas to ethnic Chinese and Tibetans over the last two to three years.

Since 2002 representatives from Beijing and the Dalai Lama have held four meetings as part of a slow-moving process of rapprochement. A fifth meeting is expected later this year.

"We're very encouraged to see more and more Chinese coming to India to make pilgrimage to Buddhist sites and explore their growing interest in Buddhist spirituality," said the Dalai Lama's secretary, Tenzing Takla.

It is also estimated that 10,000 Tibetans attended the Kalachakra, an initiation for Buddhists in Amravati, south India, last month.

Officials in Dharamsala stopped short of describing the numbers of Chinese visitors as a breakthrough but agreed it was encouraging.

The Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Communist rule, imposed in 1950 after a Chinese invasion. Visa restrictions for Chinese nationals wanting to visit India were lifted in 2003.

Despite that, the majority of Tibetans loyal to the Dalai Lama, instead of Beijing, continue to be denied passports. Last November the Dalai Lama said talks with Beijing so far had done little to ease a "very repressive" atmosphere in Tibet.