NEW DELHI, India, Oct. 6, Reuter: India, exile home of the Dalai Lama, does not expect last week’s anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa to affect its relations with China, a government official said On Tuesday.

China has charged the Dalai Lama, who lives in the north Indian town of Dharamsala, with Responsibility for the violence.

Asked to comment on the charge, the official said the Tibetan leader had not engaged in political activity from Indian soil.

“He is not being blamed for what he said in India but what he said in the United State”, the Official said.

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after an uprising against Chinese rule, last month called for the withdrawal of Chinese troops from his homeland at meetings with members of the U.S. Congress in Washington.

The Indian official said India recognized Tibet as an autonomous region of China and did not let the Dalai Lama carry out political activities here.

“The Dalai Lama has been a guest of India since 1959 and there are certain norms; no statements against China from our territory”, the official said.

“There is no question of any political activity from Indian soil and he has respected this”.

The Dalai Lama has asked journalists in Delhi to travel 400 km north to Dharamsala on Wednesday for a press conference on the Lhasa riots.

India and China are currently trying to improve their relations, which have been marred by tensions since they fought a border war in 1962.

Last summer, both sides were reported to have massed troops along the disputed border of India’s northeastern State of Arunchal Pradesh. Tension was defused by a visit to Peking by the Indian External Affairs Minister Narain Dutt Tiwari.

Tiwari was quoted as saying New Delhi wanted full normalization of its relations with Peking.

“We want to settle all our outstanding differences, including the border dispute, through negotiations,” Tiwari told the Chiense leader.

A Chinese negotiating team is due in New Delhi next month for an eighth round of talks at official level on their territorial disputes. The talks are expected to set the scene for substantive talks at ministerial level.

Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama’s spokesman in New Delhi said hundreds of Tibetans had been arrested following last Thursday’s riot in Lhasa in which up to 19 people were killed.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 9, 1987