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Dalai Lama urged to apologize to Chinese foreign minister

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-03-19 22:38

BEIJING - An article published Wednesday under the byline Yiduo asked the Dalai Lama to apologize to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

The article, titled "The Dalai Lama, You Can Never Get Away from What You Said", said the 14th Dalai Lama had lied about his appeal for the withdrawal of the Chinese Army from his so-called "Greater Tibet," referring to an area comprising the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province and parts of Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

According to the article published by Xinhua, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at a press conference on March 7, during the annual parliamentary session, that the Dalai Lama and his supporters had demanded the expulsion of the Chinese Army and Chinese citizens of other ethnic groups from the "Greater Tibet", which accounts for one-fourth of the Chinese territory.

On March 10, the Dalai Lama spoke at a press conference in memory of "the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising" in Dharmsala, India, to deny Yang's remarks. The Nobel laureate said that he had never said anything like that.

On March 13, Premier Wen Jiabao pointed out that the Dalai Lama did say so in the past, in a "Five-Point Peace Plan" he proposed during a visit to the United States in 1987 and his "Seven-Point New Proposals" published in Strasbourg, France, in 1988. "Those are all written words. The Dalai Lama can change his course. But he can never deny what he has said," Wen said.

Since then, neither the Dalai Lama nor other members of his circle have ever spoken about the topic and it seemed they had forgotten the debate, the article said.

The Western media were quite attentive when the Dalai Lama attacked the Chinese foreign minister, but few of them have covered Wen's remarks, the article said:  "The dramatic event shows that the Dalai Lama was defeated this time."

"This man has always told lies," wrote Yiduo. "Me and many of my colleagues have written to expose various lies of the Dalai Lama, but we cannot" change him.

"Even worse, we have not been able to stop him continuously telling lies on the same issue, though his lies have been exposed, " wrote Yiduo, referring to last year's March 14 violence in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.

The Dalai Lama fabricated that Chinese soldiers and police wearing lama's robes carried out the riots in Lhasa. He repeated that fabrication recently, although facts have exposed his lie.

The article also criticized unidentified Western media organizations for their so-called "fairness" and "objectiveness" on issues relating to Tibet. Some fabricated stories about how the Chinese Army was "cracking down on Tibetans", with videotapes showing police activity in Nepal.

Some Western forces just wanted to use the Dalai Lama as a card to suppress China, the article said.

Last year, a personal envoy of the Dalai Lama handed over the central government a "Memorandum on the Genuine Autonomy of the Tibetan People," but it was rejected by Zhu Weiqun, an executive deputy director of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

At a press conference last November, Zhu said the "memorandum" referred to the Chinese Constitution and law, but its essence was still in favor of "Tibetan independence." It was in complete contrast against the Chinese Constitution, Zhu stressed.

At the end of the article, the author said he would closely monitor the Dalai Lama to see if he will apologize to Yang.