By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, March 30: Beijing – The EU’s top diplomat called Monday on the Chinese government to resume talks with the Tibetan government-in-exile while welcoming a memorandum from Tibetan exiles on their vision of autonomy, according to media reports.
“For a long time, the Chinese wanted to see a written position,” DPA quoted Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s External Relations Commissioner, as saying of the Tibetan proposal made during the latest round of talks in November last year.
“Most important is that now there is clarity that the Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity is not jeopardized,” she told journalists after talks with Chinese officials in Beijing.
Ferrero-Waldner, said she discussed Tibet in talks with China’s Vice President Li Keqiang and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Sunday. She said the Chinese tone was less angry than before, but there was no sign of any change in Beijing’s hardline attitude toward contact with the exiled Tibetan leader.
Ferrero-Waldner called on China to grasp the chance posed by the talks because the Dalai Lama was an advocate for peace as well as the “middle way,” in which he advocates patient negotiations with China for autonomy rather than outright independence for Tibet.
The two sides have held eight rounds of talks since September 2002 without much success. China categorically rejected the “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People” submitted by the Tibetan side during the eighth round of talks held in Beijing.
The Dalai Lama recently said China lacks sincerity in the talks. The 73 year old Tibetan leader said he was losing his trust in the Chinese government but maintained that his faith in the Chinese people remains unshaken.
