A senior Chinese official said in comments broadcast on Friday that Beijing is open to further talks with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
Zhu Weiqun (朱維群) told the BBC: “China has done everything it can to talk to the Dalai Lama. The door is still open.”
Tibetan representatives and Chinese officials have held several rounds of talks on the disputed territory, with little apparent progress.
Earlier this week, Zhu, a vice minister of the United Front Work Department, blamed the Dalai Lama and his envoys for the talks’ failure. In an apparent hardening of Beijing’s stance, he said the Tibetan spiritual leader’s calls for greater autonomy masked his desire for the Himalayan region’s independence.
Zhu welcomed an Oct. 29 statement by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband that said: “Like every other EU member state, and the United States, we regard Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China.”
Miliband told lawmakers that Britain supported greater autonomy, rather than independence, for Tibet and called for the region’s “distinct culture, language, traditions and religions” to be respected.
Zhu said the statement “brought the UK into line with the universal position in today’s world.”
Meanwhile, a special six-day meeting of Tibetan exiles that starts tomorrow in Dharamsala has no set agenda, the Dalai Lama said, though the gathering is widely expected to determine the direction of the movement.
The 73-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader urged his followers on Friday to take responsibility for their future when they meet in northern India next week after the repeated failure of talks with China to preserve the Himalayan territory’s culture and language.
“It must be clear to all that this special meeting does not have any agenda for reaching a particular predetermined outcome,” the Dalai Lama said. “We can be proud at this moment when the Tibetan people themselves are ready and able to take responsibility for Tibet.”
China has dismissed the meeting as meaningless, saying the participants do not represent the views of most Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama voiced impatience with China last month and appeared to give up hope of achieving a form of autonomy from Beijing that would allow Tibetans to freely practice their culture, language and religion.
“As far as I’m concerned I have given up,” he said.
China insists Tibet has been part of its territory for 700 years, though many Tibetans say they were independent for most of that time. Chinese forces invaded shortly after the 1949 Communist revolution and the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 during an unsuccessful uprising against Chinese rule.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS