By MAHENDRA VED
NEW DELHI, June 25 – The first Tibetan reaction to the Sino-Indian summit in Beijing has been a welcoming one. Although India is seen as “shifting” its position while acknowledging the Tibetan Autonomous Region as part of China, as compared to the whole of Tibet, of which TAR is only a part, this is viewed as “a question of semantics” and an Indian acceptance of “the ground reality”.
Tashi Wangdi, representative of the Dalai Lama, said: “We always maintained that improvement of relations between India and China would be helpful for us in finding an amicable solution for Tibet.”
“Any forward movement in this direction will be welcomed by us,” Tashi Wangdi told The Times of India.
He expressed satisfaction that India had not accepted the Chinese position, as contained in “lots of drafts that were rejected,” that Tibet “is an inalienable part of China.”
“We are not over-concerned with the shift. It is just playing with words,” said Tashi Wangdi, who heads the New Delhi based “Bureau of His Holiness The Dalai Lama” and is thus the representative of the head of the Tibetan Buddhist sect who has been in living in exile in India since 1959.
The TAR is essentially the central region, U Tsang, of the larger Tibet which is now divided into Amdo, the northern part that is part of Qinghai province, and Kham, which is further divided into smaller units that are now attached to different Chinese provinces.
Tashi Wangdi explained that “What constitutes Tibet is one of the issues that we have to resolve with China. The Indian position does not affect this directly.”
He expressed satisfaction India’s external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha, in the thick of the talks with the Chinese, maintained that there was “no change” in the way India looked at the Tibetan issue.
Tashi Wangdi said he had not spoken to the Dalai Lama, who is now in Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir.
