World Tibet Network News Monday, June 29, 1998

MADRID, June 28 (AFP) - Exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said the only way to save Tibet was to hold direct talks with China, in an interview published in the El Mundo newspaper Sunday. "Tibet is threatened with extinction. I must, therefore, do everything possible to save my people and their unique cultural heritage." The political reality is that no-one is going to drive out the Chinese. The only realistic attitude is to negotiate directly with the Chinese authorities," the Dalai Lama said. He did not, however, say if talks were currently underway.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin revealed on Saturday that the Chinese government had opened "several channels of communication" with the Dalai Lama. But Chinese officials blamed the exiled leader for blocking the talks. The Dalai Lama's insistence on independence for the Himalayan territory was splitting the "motherland," making talks with him impossible, a foreign ministry spokesman said in Beijing. Earlier Saturday, US President Bill Clinton, currently in China, urged Beijing to start dialogue with the Dalai Lama. "I urge President Jiang to assume a dialogue with the Dalai Lama in return for the recognition that Tibet is a part of China and in recognition of the unique cultural and religious heritage of that region," Clinton said, after a two-hour summit with Jiang. China, which claims its sovereignty over Tibet dates back to the 13th century, took control of the territory in 1951 and the Dalai Lama fled to India after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The Dalai Lama said, in Sunday's interv

iew, he had dropped demands for independence in 1988, but said despite that concession China had responded with further repression. "In the past few years I have tried, by all possible means, to negotiate with China, with no result. On the contrary, the repression has become worse," he told El Mundo. The Dalai Lama also criticised the attitude of western governments towards China. "The governments must act taking into account the reality of the situation, but the absence of a moral element to their policy is really very sad," the Dalai Lama said.

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