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NEW DELHI : Two Dalai Lama envoys will hold talks with Chinese officials Sunday in southern China, a spokesman for the spiritual leader said, even as Beijing kept up its barrage of criticism against him.
The talks, taking place seven weeks after protests in Lhasa turned deadly and just three months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, were to be held in Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong.
"They (the two envoys) will arrive in China today from Europe and the US. The talks will be held tomorrow in Shenzhen," Chhime R. Chhoekyapa, secretary to the Dalai Lama, told AFP.
Speaking by telephone from the northern Indian town of Dharamshala, seat of the exiled Tibetan group, he said the envoys would meet officials from the Communist Party's United Front Work Department "as soon as they arrive."
China's state-run Xinhua news agency late Saturday quoted a central government department official as confirming the envoys had arrived in the country.
Beijing offered last month to reopen dialogue on Tibet, a move seen as a response to global protests over China's crackdown on unrest in the Himalayan region that have angered and embarrassed China's leadership ahead of the Games.
Plans for the talks came as the Olympic torch enjoyed a trouble-free run Saturday in the gambling haven of Macau, the final leg of its global tour before heading into mainland China.
The warm reception contrasted with violent disruptions, notably in London and Paris, of earlier legs of the torch run after unrest against Chinese rule began on March 10 and erupted into violence on March 14.
The torch arrived Saturday evening in the southern Chinese holiday resort of Hainan for its first mainland relay Sunday.
Exiled Tibetan leaders have sought to play down expectations for Sunday's talks, saying they will be held at an informal level and are not on a par with six earlier rounds that started in late 2002 and broke off in 2007.
"There will be no discussions over basic China-Tibet issues... as there is no atmosphere and conditions for these matters under the current situation in Tibet," exiled Tibetan official Samdhong Rinpoche told a news conference in Dharamshala late Saturday, referring to the future of Tibet.
He said the administration did not have high expectations but was still happy consultations are taking place.
"The meeting is a positive sign as the Chinese government officially announced the invitation to the envoys of the Dalai Lama for the first time, he said.
Beijing has never before officially acknowledged it was meeting envoys of the Dalai Lama, Rinpoche said.
"We'll have to see what comes out of these talks, but our past experience is we can't trust the Chinese -- they've never been sincere," said Tsewang Rigzin, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, based in Dharamshala, on Saturday.
The group, which represents some of the more radical younger generation of Tibetan youth in India, advocates independence for Tibet unlike the Dalai Lama, who says he is only pushing for "meaningful autonomy for the region."
Still, the discussions would be the first known face-to-face contact between the two sides since the unrest broke out in Tibet.
A spokesman for the exiled Tibetan group said Friday it would be a brief visit in which the envoys "will take up the urgent issue of the current crisis in the Tibetan areas."
He said they would convey the Dalai Lama's "deep concerns about the Chinese authorities' handling of the situation and also provide suggestions to bring peace to the region."
Chinese state media Saturday railed against the "Dalai clique."
"As long as the Dalai clique still exists, our struggle with the Dalai clique will not stop. We must raise our vigilance and absolutely cannot relax," the Tibet Daily newspaper said.
A member of Tibet's People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body, was quoted as saying the Dalai Lama was targeting the Olympics.
The exiled Tibetan group said 203 Tibetans were killed and about 1,000 hurt in the unrest and crackdown.
China said 20 people had been killed by Tibetan "rioters," although state media reported Monday for the first time that police had shot dead a Tibetan pro-independence "insurgent."
Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1950 before annexing the region the next year. The Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland following an abortive 1959 uprising, has repeatedly accused China of widespread rights violations there.
- AFP /ls
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