BEIJING – China confirmed on Thursday that supporters of the Dalai Lama were visiting China and said it hoped they would take a positive message back to the Tibetan spiritual leader.
Officials in Washington said on Tuesday the Dalai Lama’s special envoy had arrived in China for talks on the exiled leader’s aspirations for Tibetan autonomy, the third such visit in three years.
The United States welcomed the visit of the envoy, Lodi Gyari and said in a statement it hoped it could lead to substantive dialogue after tentative behind-the-scenes contacts in recent months.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman played down the visit, declining to give details, provide the visitors’ names or even describe them as envoys.
“We have always welcomed overseas Tibetan compatriots to come to China, including to visit the Tibet region, to have a look there and to meet their friends and relatives,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a news briefing.
“Among those people are some who are relatively close to the Dalai Lama, but I don’t think they are his so-called envoy,” he said.
But he added that he would like the message they took back to be positive.
“We hope through them, the Dalai Lama gains an overall and objective understanding of us and the situation of the motherland,” he said.
China’s second largest trading partner, the 25-nation European Union echoed Washington in welcoming the visit.
“The EU … hopes that it will encourage the start of meaningful and direct dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s representatives leading to a peaceful sustainable solution for Tibet,” the bloc said in a statement.
The International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group where Gyari is a board member in Washington, has said Tibetans hoped talks could go beyond the confidence-building meetings of the previous two visits.
Beijing, which imposed communist rule on Tibet after its troops entered in 1950 and saw the Dalai Lama flee in an abortive uprising in 1959, established direct contact with him in 1979.
The dialogue was suspended in 1993 but has quietly revived in the last 18 months amid signs China might have decided to allow a subtle but significant shift in policy.
The U.S. and the Nobel Peace Laureate say they do not favor Tibetan independence but only greater autonomy for the Tibetan people.
The exiled leader, revered by his followers as a god-king, has accused Beijing of widespread human rights abuses and of swamping Tibet with ethnic Chinese to destroy Tibetan culture.
China accuses him of using his religious status to try to split Tibet from China.
STATEMENT OF EUROPEAN UNION
Brussels, 16 September 2004
Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on the visit of the envoys of the Dalai Lama to China
The European Union welcomes the fact that the representatives of the Dalai Lama are at present visiting China for the third time, since resumption of the contacts in September 2002.
The EU has been looking forward to a third visit and hopes that it will encourage the start of meaningful and direct dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s representatives, leading to a peaceful and sustainable solution for Tibet.
The EU will follow this visit with great interest.
