A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday that she had no information about planned talks announced Friday between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. But she continued to make it clear that China blamed him for the violence in Tibet and ensuing unrest in adjacent areas with large Tibetan populations.
“We hope the Dalai can cherish this opportunity, recognize the situation and change his position to take concrete measures to stop his criminal acts of violence, stop his sabotage of the Beijing Olympics and his separatist activities, so as to create conditions for the next step of talks,” the spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said during a news conference.
The Dalai Lama has denied any involvement in the unrest and has long insisted that he is seeking greater autonomy for Tibetan parts of western China, not an independent Tibet.
Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile, said the Dalai Lama’s envoys were still awaiting word on when and where a dialogue might take place.
“We are in touch with them through all the means of communications available in the modern world,” he said. “We hope the meeting takes place as soon as possible.”
It is not entirely clear what may be accomplished at such a meeting. Until talks broke off last summer, the two sides had met half a dozen times since 2002 with little progress. Discussions have largely avoided the subject of enhanced Tibetan autonomy, focusing instead on the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet, which he fled in 1959 during a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Source : The New York Times