Beijing - China on Tuesday said talks on Tibet with envoys
of the Dalai Lama were 'only a beginning' and urged the exiled
Tibetan Buddhist leader to show more 'sincerity.'
'I want to stress that the current contact is only a beginning,'
foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said when asked about weekend
talks between Chinese officials and two envoys of the Dalai Lama.
'As long as the Dalai side shows sincerity, especially in its
actions, then the contact will continue,' Qin told reporters.
Qin did not explain what China wanted the Dalai Lama to do to show
sincerity.
The government continues to accuse him of pursuing independence
for Tibet, despite his frequent public renouncement of independence
in favour of maximum autonomy for Tibetans within China.
State media on Monday accused the Dalai Lama of 'monstrous
crimes,' continuing the government's tough rhetoric against him.
The 'Dalai clique' wanted to 'confuse public opinion and incite
ethnic hatred' as part of a plan to split China, the official Tibet
Daily newspaper said in a commentary.
'Following the March 14 incident in Lhasa, the Dalai has not only
refused to admit his monstrous crimes but has also continued to
perpetuate fraud,' the commentary said, referring to rioting in the
capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
China said 18 civilians and one police officer died in the March
14 rioting in Lhasa.
The Tibetan government in exile, based in the Indian town of
Dharamsala, said 203 people had died since March in widespread unrest
in Tibetan areas of China, most of them Tibetans shot by Chinese
police.
On Monday, the government in exile rejected as 'baseless' the
latest Chinese accusations that the Dalai Lama was behind the
violence in Tibet.
'We do not accept it. We ask them (China) to prove the allegations
against the Dalai Lama to the world community,' Samdhong Rinpoche,
prime minister of the government in exile, told the PTI news agency.
The talks in China's southern city of Shenzhen were the first
meeting between the two sides in nearly a year.
They followed international pressure on China to reopen dialogue
after Beijing's crackdown on Tibetan protesters, which has marred its
preparations for the Olympics.
The Chinese government has engaged in six rounds of dialogue with
representatives of the Dalai Lama since 2002, but no progress has
been reported. The previous round was held in June.
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