World Tibet Network News Sunday, June 28, 1998

By John Pomfret

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, June 28, 1998; Page A23

BEIJING, June 27 - Holding out the possibility of talks with the Dalai Lamaand acknowledging the existence of secret contacts with the Tibetan spiritual leader, President Jiang Zemin today provided the first public glimmers of hope in years over the future of Tibet. At the end of an extraordinary, wide-ranging public dialogue with President Clinton, Jiang stopped suddenly, apologized for having to "take up an additional five minutes" and then launched into a spontaneous monologue listing his conditions for opening talks with the Dalai Lama. Jiang said that as long as the Tibetan leader, who fled China in 1959 after the Chinese government's bloody crackdown on Tibet, acknowledged that Tibet is an "inalienable" part of China, and that Taiwan is a province of China, "then the door to dialogue and negotiation is open."

Jiang's demands are not new, but, given that he raised the issue without prompting from Clinton, they represented an important change in the way China has handled Tibet, Western officials said. The tone differed sharply from recent rhetoric in China, which has vehemently condemned the Dalai Lama as a "splittist" and blamed him for the trouble in that faraway region. Jiang did neither of those things. As such, Tibet watchers said, it is significant that Jiang's remarks were broadcast live in China -- and could mark a significant softening of China's line on Tibet. "No one expected him to even address it. I just don't know where that camefrom," said an administration official, adding that he believed Jiang added Taiwan into the equation because the Dalai Lama recently opened an office there. "It is an unusual olive branch, a scarred olive branch, but an olive branch nonetheless," he said. For the past 10 years, China has taken a hard line against any concessions to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan movement. Thus

there have been many false starts and blind alleys over the future of Tibet, once a feudal Buddhist theocracy located on the "roof of the world," bracketed by the Himalaya and Kunlun Shan mountains.

So Tibet watchers cautioned against undue optimismthat a thaw in relations is at hand. But soon after Jiang made his comments, a senior official in the Tibetan government-in-exile welcomed Jiang's remarks. "I would like to express support for Jiang's willingness to discuss this matter," said Lodi Gyari, the Washington-based representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile, in a telephone interview from Switzerland. "We would like to reciprocate in whatever way we could for forward movement." Gyari said the Dalai Lama would like to make a religious pilgrimage to Mount Wutai, a series of five peaks sacred to Buddhists in China's Shanxi province, and to meet Jiang on the way there. In 1988, China offered the Dalai Lama the opportunity to come to China for the funeral of the Panchen Lama, the second most important Tibetan leader, but he declined. Since then, the offer has been withdrawn. During the televised debate, Clinton said he understood Jiang's demand that the Dalai Lama acknowledge Chinese sovereignty ov

er Tibet. He also encouraged Jiang to meet the Tibetan leader. "I have spent time with the Dalai Lama. I believe him to be an honest man, and I believe if he had a conversation with President Jiang, they would like each other very much," Clinton said. Tibetan officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that secret talks are already taking place, although the usual channel between the government-in-exile and China -- through the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi --remains closed.

The officials said the talks are occurring outside China and that Americans are involved in the back-channel exchanges. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her husband, Richard Blum, took a letter to Jiang in September 1997 from the Dalai Lama. Former president Jimmy Carter also has raised the Tibetan question with Jiang, Tibetan officials said. Richard C. Holbrooke, nominated last week to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has visited Gyari several times to discuss the potential for a break through, said sources close to the Tibetan movement. Jeff Bader of the National Security Council also has been speaking with Tibetan officials, U.S. sources said. Many issues separate China and the Tibetan movement. Prominent among them is the definition of Tibet. China defines Tibet as its political boundaries, whereas the Tibetan exile movement, which is controlled in part by exiles from Sichuan and Qinghai provinces, claims all lands in China with a Tibetan population. Another issue concerns the selection of t

he reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama backed the choice of one boy in May 1995; the Chinesere jected that choice, picked another and broke off secret talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives. The boy the Tibetans chose has since disappeared and is believed to be under house arrest in Beijing.