WELCOME ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS TO THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL TIBET SUPPORT GROUP CONFERENCE

15 to 17 June 1996, Bonn, Germany

It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to this second International Conference of Tibet Support Groups. All of you have travelled great distances and at great personal expense to be here today to show your support for the truth of tibetan people's struggle. There is no way for us to adequately thank you for this.

We are highly honoured to have His Holiness the Dalai Lama inaugurating this conference. His Holiness' presence is a measure of the great importance the tibetan leadership attaches to the discussions and outcome of this conference.

I would like to emphasize from the beginning that this gathering is not a conspiracy against China or the Chinese people as the Beijing government might accuse us. We are drawn together hereby our shared committment and values for the promotion of justice, equality, human dignity and truth. A clear indication that this is so is the presence of representatives of five pro-democracy Chinese organizations at this gathering, and we Tibetans welcome them from the core of our hearts.

Trough support and sympathy for the cause of the Tibetan people increased steadily troughout the world since 1959 when the Tibetans rose up against the Chinese communist military occupation of Tibet, we have been able to bring this international support under one umbrella only six years ago under the common name of the Tibet support group movement during the first international Tibet support conference held in Dharamsala in 1990.

Since then the world-wide Tibet support group movement has grown enormously, and because of your concerted and co-ordinated efforts, we have been able to make unprecedented impact on the international community as far as the issue of Tibet is concerned.

The creation of the Tibet support group movement and its success in publicising Chinese communist brutality in Tibet is due to the unstinted efforts of each and every individual Tibet supporter throughout the world. You have worked voluntarily for the cause of Tibet. Your work for Tibet is a fight for truth and justice everywhere in the world. You do not gain any personal benefit from your work for Tibet, but have continued to consistently support and promote the Tibetan cause in the hope that your efferts will help the Tibetan to regain their lost freedom and rights.

To further co-ordinate our efforts, to exchange ideas and experiences of the past years and to plan for the bigger tasks ahead of us, we had always hoped to organise such conferences more frequentely. Because of various reasons, including financial, we have not been able to do so. Fortunately for us, the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation stepped in. The Friedrich-Naumann Foundation is unique in that the best support it could provide the Tibetan People is political support, which it has been doing for several years now. The FriedrichNaumann Foundation has also sponsered this conference and thus provided us the opportunity to strategize on what diraction the world-wide Tibet movement should take in the years to come.

To both the individual Tibet supporters and to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, I, on behalf of the Tibetan Government-inExile, would like to express the heart-felt appreciation of the Tibetan people everywhere in the world, and specially those in Tibet who continue to suffer under Chinese communist rule, but whose suffering will come to an end because of the courage, devotion and selfless efforts of all of you who have gethered here.

The tasks ahead of the Tibetan Movement are countless dounting, but with your continued support and goodwill the day will come when Tibet becomes a nation in world of nations.

Tashi Delek and thank you.