Two Dalai Lama envoys left for China yesterday for talks on the future of Tibet, just days after the Tibetan spiritual leader said he saw no hope in the current dialogue with Beijing.
Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, Kelsang Gyaltsen and three aides will be in the Chinese capital for a week for what will be an eighth round of talks with Chinese officials, the Tibetan government-in-exile in India said in a statement.
Ahead of the talks, the Chinese government said it expected the envoys to give positive responses to its demands made in previous talks.
In comments published by Xinhua news agency on Wednesday, an unnamed Chinese official said the Dalai Lama should “treasure this opportunity” for dialogue.
But in a public address in Dharamshala last weekend, the Tibetan leader made clear that he had all but given up on the possibility of reaching a mutually acceptable solution to the Tibet issue with the current Beijing administration.
The Dalai Lama said he had “faith and trust” in the Chinese people, but that his “faith and trust in the Chinese government is diminishing.”
The Dalai Lama has long championed a “middle path” policy with China that espouses “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet, rather than the full independence for the remote Himalayan region that many younger, more radical activists demand.
The future of that policy will be the focus of a special meeting in the Indian hillstation of Dharamsala next month of about 300 delegates representing the worldwide exiled Tibetan community.
The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 following a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule.
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS