Dalai Lama's envoys head to Beijing for fence-mending

By Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - Envoys of the Dalai Lama flew to Beijing on Thursday for fence-mending talks, the Tibetan government-in-exile said, days after he expressed dismay at China's attitude about Tibet's future.

The talks, the eighth round since 2002 and the first after Beijing hosted the Olympics in August, come amid growing concern about the Dalai Lama's health and the diminishing possibility of a meaningful settlement.

The exiled Nobel Peace Prize laureate, revered by Buddhists in Tibet and elsewhere, has said he wants a high level of autonomy for Tibet, but not outright independence. China considers him a trouble-making separatist.

Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, the Dalai Lama's envoys in Washington and Switzerland respectively, will sit down for talks with the Communist Party's United Front Work Department, which deals with ethnic minorities and religious issues, the Tibetan government-in-exile said in India.

"It is very good that the two sides are talking," Thubten Samphel, the exiled government's spokesman told Reuters in Dharamsala, the north Indian hill station. He said Tibetans were serious about the negotiations although they did not expect a result immediately.

"We wish the dialogue process to move forward so the rights of the people of Tibet are greatly improved."

The envoys would be accompanied by three senior assistants and would stay in China for about a week, the spokesman added.

The Dalai Lama was hospitalised with abdominal pain in August and underwent gallstone surgery this month in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, the seat of his exiled government since 1959 when he fled his Himalayan homeland after a failed uprising.