Dalai Lama says no use talking if China not 'serious'

NEW DELHI (AFP) — The Dalai Lama on Sunday warned talks with China would be pointless unless Beijing was "serious" about finding a solution to the Tibetan issue.

"We have had six rounds of talks but nothing happened and this time if China is serious then it is good, but if it wants to show the world that 'we are talking' then there is no use in meeting," the Dalai Lama's spokesman Tenzin Takla told AFP.

"We have to consider everything," he added.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency announced Friday that Beijing would meet an envoy of the Tibetan leader for talks in the coming days.

The latest comments came amid reports that Lodhi Gyari, a special envoy of the Tibetan spiritual leader who has headed previous rounds of inconclusive talks with China since 2002, would arrive in India on Wednesday.

Takla confirmed envoy Gyari's planned trip but did not elaborate except to say he would travel to the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala for "consultations" with the self-exiled Tibetan leadership.

The spokesman of the 72-year-old Nobel laureate also said there was an urgent need to reopen contacts as the Chinese crackdown in the Tibetan region had been stepped up.

"Ongoing repression inside Tibet has been stepped up," Takla said by telephone from Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile are based.

"Army troops are surrounding monasteries and arrests are going on," Takla said of the Chinese crackdown which followed deadly anti-Beijing riots that erupted in the regional capital Lhasa on March 10.

"And His Holiness feels to solve the problems we have to meet for talks," the official said.

Analysts say the offer by China, which hosts the August Olympics in Beijing, was a response to the intense global pressure over its crackdown in the remote Himalayan region.

The Dalai Lama returned to Dharamshala on Saturday from a foreign tour.