LONDON – Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said he was “optimistic” about patching up relations with China, as he continued a visit to Britain loudly condemned by Beijing.
Speaking at a lecture in London on the second day of his trip, the Dalai Lama — reviled by the Chinese leadership as a separatist — noted that China was changing as a nation.
China’s economic modernisation, as well as factors such as an increasing interest in Tibet and its Buddhist faith among Chinese people, was helping to improve the situation, he said Friday.
“I think that if you look at the Tibetan situation locally, all is not hopeless,” he told an audience at Westminster Central Hall, round the corner from the Houses of Parliament in London.
“Therefore, judging from a wider perspective, I am optimistic,” he said.
The Dalai Lama was answering a question about how relations with China might be improved and whether he was hopeful about holding new talks between his envoys and Beijing officials.
It followed a lecture which, like the rest of his visit, was officially a spiritually-based one.
Nonetheless the Dalai Lama has already met a series of top British figures including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, although Prime Minister Tony Blair chose not to see him.
Later Friday he was due to see the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, Michael Howard.
The Dalai Lama’s strongest supporter on this trip has been Prince Charles, heir to the British throne and a well-known supporter of the Tibetan cause.
On Thursday evening he hosted a reception for the Buddhist leader at his London home, St James’s Palace, and also joined the audience the next day for the lecture.
China’s foreign office expressed Thursday its “regret and dissatisfaction” at the official contacts with the Dalai Lama.
Despite two sets of meetings between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and Chinese officials, Beijing still rejects the Buddhist leader’s protestations that he does not seek full Tibetan independence as “insincere”.
“I am not seeking independence, I am not seeking separation,” the Dalai Lama repeated on Friday, saying that he was happy for Tibet to remain part of China “provided the Chinese government respects our culture”.
He added: “I think that many ordinary Chinese people believe that (we do not seek independence) … but the leadership has its own policy. They still pretend not to be convinced.”
Beijing has occupied Tibet, which it insists has been an integral part of the Chinese nation for centuries, in 1951.
Since then it has been accused of trying to wipe out Tibet’s unique Buddhist-based culture through political and religious repression as well as mass ethnic Chinese immigration.
The Dalai Lama, who led Tibet’s hereditary theocratic regime ahead of the occupation, fled Tibet after an abortive uprising in 1959 and established a government-in-exile in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala
