Origin : Embassy Beijing
08BEIJING1454
2008-04-16 10:10
.. President Hu Jintao is firmly in charge of the PRC's Tibet policy, with the leadership unified over Beijing's current hard-line stance, several Embassy contacts told over the past week. Sources argued that given Hu Jintao's own e xpertise and experience regarding Tibet (Hu was provincial party secretary in Tibet in the late 1980s), as well as the "extreme" importance and sensitivity of the Tibet issue, it would be virtually "impossible" for any leader to challenge Hu on Tibet. An issue as sensitive as Tibet policy would be controlled by a small group of top leaders, limited primarily to the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC), meaning it is difficult to know precisely the content of leadership discussions on Tibet, longtime Embassy contact xxxxx.Nevertheless, "it is still quite clear," xxxxx argued, that Hu Jintao is "completely" in charge of the Tibet issue, and no other leader would "dare" confront Hu or the Party line over such a critical issue. Doing so would be "political suicide" and would make any leader vulnerable to charges of being"soft," or even being a "traitor," risking eventual removal,a la the ouster of former Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang in 1987, xxxxx averred.(…)

Source : http://wikileaks.ch