Published by: World Tibet Network News, Friday, July 5, 1996

TOKYO, July 6, 1996 (Kyodo) -- A Japanese diplomat stationed abroad has met informally with the Dalai Lama in an unusual contact between the Japanese government and the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, a Japanese legislator revealed Saturday.

Fumihiko Igarashi said the diplomat, a first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in New Delhi, visited the Dalai Lama together with him and four other legislators belonging to a nonpartisan parliamentarians' league on Tibet at his residence in Dharmsala in northern India on April 30.

Igarashi, a House of Representatives member belonging to New Party Sakigake, the smallest of the three ruling coalition parties, broke the news at a Tokyo party marking the Dalai Lama's birthday.

He said the diplomat also joined talks between the legislators and members of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Although the meeting had an unofficial character, Beijing, which insists the Himalayan region is an integral part of Chinese territory and does not recognize the Dalai Lama as a legitimate Tibetan leader, is not likely to let it go unprotested.

China is increasingly sensitive to criticism over human rights records in Tibet and accuses Dalai Lama supporters of encouraging secessionism.

Last month, Beijing canceled a visit by German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel after the German parliament passed a resolution which rapped China's human rights record in Tibet and accused Beijing of trying to eradicate Tibetan culture.

Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950 to cement China's longtime control over the region.

The Dalai Lama, holding the highest rank in the Tibetan clergy, and tens of thousands of his followers fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959 and established a government-in-exile there.