China keeps up Dalai Lama attacks despite talks pledge
Posted: 26 April 2008 1204 hrs

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BEIJING - China's media kept up its attacks on the Dalai Lama on Saturday, with state press accusing him of destabilising Tibet, just a day after Beijing agreed to open talks with his aides.

The country's official Xinhua news agency announced on Friday that government officials would meet "in coming days" with an envoy of Tibet's spiritual leader.

The announcement drew praise from the United States and around the world amid hope it could lead to a solution to recent Tibetan unrest.

But the People's Daily, which ran only a brief item on the announcement, gave no indication that China had softened its stance, running several scathing pieces on the Dalai Lama.

"The Dalai Lama clique has used all means possible to wreck the stability and development of Tibet," the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's main mouthpiece, said in an article headlined "Their actions seriously violate Buddhist teachings."

It went on to say: "The Dalai Lama, the self-proclaimed 'religious leader', is actually the chief ringleader of activities to sabotage the normal religious order of Tibet."

The paper also accused him and his supporters of spreading the "false rumour" that China oppresses Tibetan Buddhism and of conspiring to turn world opinion against China.

"The 'Tibet problem' has become their tool for courting Western support and pressuring China," it said.

Violent rioting against Chinese rule erupted in the regional capital Lhasa on March 14, and quickly spread across huge areas of the Tibetan plateau. The unrest prompted a massive Chinese security crackdown that has sealed off all of Tibet and adjacent affected areas.

Since then, China's print and broadcast media have maintained a near-constant stream of reports blaming a "Dalai clique" for orchestrating the unrest, without offering proof.

An article in the Tibet Daily kept up the vilification campaign in an interview Saturday with a Tibetan official who called the recent violence "another frightful display of the Dalai clique's independence schemes."

"We swear to resolutely fight this," the official was quoted as saying. - AFP/ir