CALCUTTA: Robert W Ford, a retired British diplomat and expert on Tibetan affairs, Tuesday suggested that India lend its support to the Dalai Lamas proposal for turning central Asia into a Zone of peace.

Known for his book “Captured in Tibet”, Ford, who was the first European ever to become an official of the Tibetan government during 1948-50, told newsmen here that besides bringing in peace and freedom to the people of Tibet, a peace zone would provide a buffer between India and China.

“At present, the Chinese authority extends right up to the north-esteem states of India, causing occasional tension,” he said.

Ford, now on a visit to India on an invitation of the Dalai Lama, said the Dalai Lamas proposal at an international conference in Costa Rica in 1989 received “wide” support, even from the U S president, George Bush, “though the Chinese authority paid no heed to that”.

A retired British council-general to Morocco, Angola, France, Sweden and Switzerland, Ford suffered imprisonment in Tibet during the 1950-55 by the Chinese red army while he was a radio officer with the Tibetan government.

 Optimistic about Tibet’s Liberation, Ford said with the change in the world political landscape and the gradual collapse of communism, Tibet would be able to “see the light of freedom owing to a Gradual shift in the outlook of the younger generation in China towards Tibet”.

Ford regretted that the United Nations concern about Tibet remained confined to “Human Rights Violation” only and the world body never discussed liberating the country.

Ford said the Tibetans had failed to build up any movement after the “armed rebellion” in 1950 and a “mutiny” in 1989 was crushed in Lhasa and the nearby towns. “No democratic movement was allowed and there was no newspaper in Tibet,” he regretted.

Ford said the Tibetans had been suffering from a food crisis and starvation. He claimed that since 1950 nearly 6,000 Buddhist monasteries all over Tibet had been destroyed.

Asked whether the Dalai Lama would return to Tibet, Ford said nothing could be said considering the changing world political scene particularly when a “change in the thinking pattern of the younger generation of China was clearly discernable”.

Article extracted from this publication >> December 6, 1991