TAR Governor Acknowledges "Dialogue" with Dalai Lama's Envoys

March 29, 2006

Jampa Phuntsog (Xiangba Pingcuo), the Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) government, acknowledged the Dalai Lama's envoys’ February visit to China during "unusually frank" remarks to reporters in Beijing on March 6, according to a Reuters report dated the same day. "We cannot call the talks negotiations now. They are just dialogue, or contact, but the channels for communication have always been smooth," he said, adding that, "We will have further discussions in [the] future. But we haven't yet reached the stage of substantive negotiations."

Jampa Phuntsog (Xiangba Pingcuo), the Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) government, acknowledged the Dalai Lama's envoys’ February visit to China during "unusually frank" remarks to reporters in Beijing on March 6, according to a Reuters report dated the same day. "We cannot call the talks negotiations now. They are just dialogue, or contact, but the channels for communication have always been smooth," he said, adding that, "We will have further discussions in [the] future. But we haven't yet reached the stage of substantive negotiations." Jampa Phuntsog, who also serves as a Deputy Secretary of the TAR Communist Party Committee, made the comments to the press at a meeting of the TAR delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC). The TAR delegation meeting was open to reporters for the first time, according to the Reuters account.

The South China Morning Post (subscription required) reported on March 7 that NPC Vice Chairman Ragdi (Raidi), a member of the Communist Party Central Committee who once served as Chairman of the TAR People's Congress, said, "We have maintained unimpeded channels for contact with the Dalai Lama, and some of those channels are not known [by the outside world]."

Jampa Phuntsog's and Ragdi's comments were more frank than remarks by Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesman Qin Gang at a February 16 MFA press briefing. When asked about the arrival the previous day of Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, the Dalai Lama's envoys, Qin described their visit as an internal affair. He said that some "overseas Tibetans" were visiting China in a "private capacity," according to a Press Trust of India (PTI) report on February 16 (reprinted on the Web site of the World Tibet Network (WTN)). The official MFA transcript of the press conference contains no reference to the envoys or their presence in China, but records Qin's remarks protesting the Dalai Lama's February 15-20 visit to Israel.