By Kalsang Rinchen
Dharamsala, May 17 – China’s key ally Russia said it is ready to help settle the conflict between China and the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama.
According to a news report by state-run RIA Novosti, Lavrov said that Russia is closely following the developments between China and the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama. “We are following carefully what is happening between the leadership of China and the Dalai Lama and we know that the Chinese leadership is deeply committed to the Dalai Lama dissociating himself from any kind of political activity and separatist tendencies in regard to one or another territory in China,” Lavrov was quoted as saying in a speech at the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament last Thursday.
Interestingly enough, Russian authorities last month have rejected a request by the Kalmykia Buddhist Association to grant Russian entry visa to the Tibetan leader, Interfax reported citing Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the supreme Lama of Kalmykia.
Beijing accuses the Tibetan leader, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize of trying to “split the motherland” and calls him a “separatist,” an allegation the Tibetan leader however denies saying he seeks a genuine autonomy for Tibet consisting of the three traditional provinces of Tibet.
Talks between Dalai Lama’s envoys and Beijing resumed in January 2010 after it had come to a standstill with the “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People” submitted by the Tibetan side at the eighth round of talks facing derision from China which called it a demand for ‘half-independence’ and ‘disguised independence’ or ‘covert independence’.”
Tibetan side, however, maintains that the articles of the proposed memorandum were prepared in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the PRC and its laws on National Regional Autonomy, and claims China has rejected the proposal without providing any “legal and rational explanations”.
“We have already made all necessary and possible compromise that could have been made, and there is nothing left to concede any further,” Rinpoche told a gathering of Tibetan parliamentarians and leaders, including former ministers, on the sidelines of ninth session of the 14th Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile.
Rinpoche also stressed that there cannot be any compromise on the demand that “all Tibetan people should be under one single administration.”
“Our single agenda has been to seek genuine or meaningful autonomy for the Tibetan people under a single administration within the framework of the People Republic of China,” the Tibetan PM said.
There are some 700,000 followers of Buddhism in the Russian Federation, mostly in Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva. In 2006, amidst grand cultural show by artistes from the three Buddhist republics, the Republic of Kalmykia presented Dalai Lama the “White Lotus Order”, the highest civilian award of the country, in recognition of the Tibetan leader’s “outstanding merits and considerable contribution for the prosperity and the revival of spirituality” in the region.
