Hawks close door on China-Dalai talks: Tibetan

Beijing, July 17: A veteran Tibetan Communist has accused Chinese government hawks of closing the door on dialogue with the Dalai Lama and misleading the leadership about the exiled Buddhist monk's influence, sources said today.

Phuntso Wangye, who led Chinese advance troops into Tibet in 1951, wrote to the cabinet spokesman's office on July 5.

This was about two weeks after Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet's regional government, dismissed Phuntso Wangye's call for the Dalai Lama to return home.

Phuntso Wangye noted that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a news conference in March that the door for dialogue with the Dalai Lama was ''always open'' as long as he recognised that Tibet and Taiwan were inalienable parts of China and abandoned ''splittist'' activities.

But Phuntso Wangye accused Qiangba Puncog of trying to close the door for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Communist rule, said the sources close to the veteran Communist Party member.

In a sign of the Dalai Lama's unfading influence, Phuntso Wangye said thousands of Tibetans risked death and crossed the Himalayas to India each year to see their spiritual leader, the sources quoted his letter as saying.

Citing another example, Phuntso Wangye said troops, tanks and police were mobilised but failed to stop Tibetans from marking the Dalai Lama's birthday each year in defiance of a ban.

Only ''fools'' and ''extreme leftists'', or ultra-conservatives, would run counter to Chairman Mao Zedong's directive that ethnicity and religion were key to handling the Tibet issue well, the sources, who requested anonymity, quoted the letter as saying.

Phuntso Wangye hoped the central government would clear obstacles to the Dalai Lama's return, the sources said, adding that delays should be prevented.

The cabinet spokesman's office declined immediate comment when reached by telephone.

Phuntso Wangye said he had sufficient evidence to back up his assertion that a majority of Tibetans, and not a minority as claimed by Qiangba Puncog, wanted the Dalai Lama to return.

Qiangba Puncog was not qualified to represent Tibetans, Phuntso Wangye said.

He wrote that there were no major differences between the Dalai Lama, who wants autonomy, and the Chinese central government, which cherishes national unification.

China and the Dalai Lama's envoys have held six rounds of talks since 2002, but there has been little progress.

Reuters exclusively obtained letters sent by Phuntso Wangye to President Hu Jintao from 2004 to 2006 in which the 84-year-old former member of parliament condemned hawks for thriving on their opposition to the Dalai Lama.

Reuters disclosed the contents of the letters in March, revealing a debate in China's senior political echelons on the possible return of the Dalai Lama.

A committed Communist, Phuntso Wangye acted as interpreter at a 1954 meeting between the Dalai Lama and Chairman Mao in Beijing. Later purged, he spent 18 years in solitary confinement before his political rehabilitation.

REUTERS

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