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Dalai Lama slams Lhasa rail link

Basharat Peer in New Delhi

The Dalai Lama believes Beijing's plans to connect the Tibetan capital Lhasa with three Chinese cities by rail is an attempt to forcibly change Tibet's demography.

Speaking to a select group of journalists at a Delhi hotel on Saturday, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, who is the head of state as well as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, said: "[The] Chinese are setting up the railway tracks, but it is not for economic development. They have plans to transfer 20 million Chinese population into Tibet. The purpose of the railways is basically to facilitate the transfer of population."

Normally, the setting up of railway tracks is seen as a step towards progress, but in Tibet's case it is an exception, he said. Work has already started on the three railway tracks, which will all connect China with Lhasa.

He criticised the move on ecological grounds as well, saying, "It is doing serious damage to the environment."

On the status of his struggle, he said all his appeals for a dialogue with the Chinese had been in vain. Instead, Beijing had stepped up its accusations against him.

He had recently met American President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, and "they clearly indicated that they carry the same policy [on Tibet] as the Clinton administration, but more actively", he said.

The Clinton government had appointed a coordinator for Tibet affairs in the state department. But the Dalai Lama expects the Bush regime to go a step further by raising the Tibetan question at every Sino-US meeting to persuade China to talk with the Tibetan leadership.

"We do not want arms or ammunition from the US, neither do we want them to raise our issue in the United Nations. All we want them to do for us is to persuade China to talk to us on our demand, which is not for independence, but autonomy," he said.

But a section of Tibetan youth is getting impatient with the prolonged struggle. They also demand complete independence, instead of the Dalai Lama's 'middle path' approach of autonomy, which he adopted in 1987.

The Dalai Lama did not deny reports that these young Tibetans are considering launching an armed uprising against China. "There are individuals who do not believe in my approach. In fact some of them, who are staying inside Tibet, say 'that family [China] does not understand truth, but only violence'."

But as long as he was in charge, the commitment to non-violence would remain, he added. He remained non-committal on the question of his successor. It was not his business to nominate anyone, he said. "The old generation will move out and the new generation will step in."

The process of electing a new leader was being democratised and the parliament of the Tibetan refugees would elect its prime minister after a direct election on July 29, he added.

He also remained circumspect about the controversy surrounding the 17th Karmapa.

Ogyen Trinley, the youngster who escaped from his monastery in Tibet and reached India in December 1999, has been officially recognised as the 17th Karmapa and head of the rich Rumtek monastery in Sikkim by the Dalai Lama.

But Shamarpa Rimpoche, a senior lama of the Karma Kagyu sect -- one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism -- has been claiming that his protégé, Thaye Dorjee, is the real Karmapa, and warned that there would trouble in Sikkim if Ogyen Trinley visited Rumtek.

In order to avoid a confrontation, the Indian government has imposed travel restrictions on Ogyen Trinley, who has not been allowed to visit Sikkim.

"It is for the Government of India to decide whether the Karmapa should be allowed to visit the Rumtek monastery in Sikkim, his original seat. I do not have anything to say here," the Dalai Lama said.

Coming back to the question of talks with China, he said the last official communication between Beijing and the Tibetan government-in-exile was in October 1996. Then in 1999, the Dalai Lama's elder brother had paid a visit to Beijing, where the officials had conveyed the Chinese stand to him and he had conveyed their message to the Dalai Lama.

"In return I requested the president [of China] to allow a delegation from our side, but it was not granted," he said.

He, however, struck an optimistic note, saying that even Chinese experts on the Tibet-China issue had told him that China was changing fast, and was likely to concede the Tibetan demand for autonomy within the next 15 years.

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