Tibetan says hawks blocking Dalai Lama's return

BEIJING, Mar 7 (Reuters) A Tibetan Communist who led Chinese advance troops into his homeland decades ago has written to President Hu Jintao and condemned hawks for thriving on their opposition to the exiled Dalai Lama and for blocking his return.

Phuntso Wangye's three letters to Hu have never been made public and signal a debate in China's senior political echelons on the possible return of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising in the Himalayan region.

''They make a living, are promoted and become rich by opposing splittism,'' Phuntso, who spent 18 years in solitary confinement after being purged in the 1950s, wrote in 2004.

Reuters exclusively obtained copies of the letters from two sources close to Phuntso.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants greater autonomy, not independence, for his predominantly Buddhist homeland. But Chinese and Tibetan leftists, or conservatives, are convinced otherwise and regularly denounce him for trying to split Tibet from the Chinese ''motherland''.

In his 2006 letter, Phuntso singled out Lt Gen Yin Fatang, party boss of Tibet in the 1980s, for sticking to ''wrong'' leftist policies -- a rare revelation of the unfading influence of hawks.

During a meeting with a Reuters correspondent at his Beijing home recently, Phuntso said in fluent Chinese he sent the letters to Hu via parliament of which he was a member.

''I said it all in my letters,'' the tall, still-handsome 84-year-old said, declining to comment further on the record to observe party discipline which bar members from speaking to foreign reporters without approval.

The letters have also been read by dozens of Tibetan officials who hold a rank equivalent to vice minister or higher.

China and the Dalai Lama's envoys have held five rounds of dialogue since 2002, but there have been no major breakthroughs.

''If the Dalai Lama and the central government reconcile, these people will be in a state of trepidation, feel nervous and could lose their jobs,'' Phuntso's 2004 letter read.

In an indication China's policy towards Tibet was to drag its feet until after the Dalai Lama's death, Phuntso wrote: ''Any notion of delaying the problem until after the 14th Dalai Lama dies a natural death is not only naive, it is also unwise and especially tactically wrong.'' Phuntso warned that the Dalai Lama's death would radicalise young Tibetan hardliners frustrated with his ''Middle Way''.

Invoking Hu's ''harmonious society'' slogan, Phuntso wrote in 2005 that striving for the return of hundreds of thousands of exiled Tibetans would turn ''confrontation into harmony''.

Phuntso wrote that ''wrong leftist policies continue on ethnic and religious issues especially Tibetan issues'' and should cease.

''I hope relations between the Dalai Lama and the central government are reconciled,'' Phuntso's 2006 letter read.

Phuntso is a giant in modern Tibetan politics.

He was one of five people who led Chinese advance troops into Tibet's capital Lhasa in 1951. He was the interpreter in negotiations and witnessed the signing of a 17-point agreement on the ''peaceful liberation'' of his homeland.

When the Dalai Lama met Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1954, Phuntso was the interpreter. Phuntso was one of the central government's 11 plenipotentiary representatives in Tibet before he was purged in 1958.

Phuntso lost the ability to speak when he was freed from prison in 1978 after spending 18 years in solitary confinement. He was politically rehabilitated and now lives in an apartment building housing cabinet ministers with his second wife.

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