Chinese Leader Is Willing to Meet Dalai Lama, French Premier Says

Chinese President Jiang Zemin said Friday that he is willing to meet Tibet’s Dalai Lama if the exiled spiritual leader recognized China’s rule over his homeland, visiting French officials said.

The officials said Jiang made the offer to French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin as the French leader delivered a message to him from the Dalai Lama.

Jospin, who met Jiang on the second day of an official visit to China, has said he is prepared to help arrange a dialogue with the Dalai Lama if Chinese authorities are willing.

The Dalai Lama is seeking talks with Beijing to press for greater autonomy for Tibet, which Chinese forces occupied in 1950. He has said he is not seeking independence.

Besides demanding recognition that Tibet is a part of China, Jiang also set as a condition for talks that the Dalai Lama refrain from visiting Taiwan.

The Chinese leader mentioned similar conditions in talks with President Clinton last June. Communist China regards nationalist-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province.

The Dalai Lama last year paid his first visit to Taiwan since he fled his Himalayan homeland in 1959 after the failure of an anti-Chinese uprising.

He had planned to travel to Taiwan again this year, but Taiwanese newspapers have reported that he postponed the trip indefinitely to avoid jeopardizing a chance of talks with Beijing.

Jiang told Jospin that they could not meet in Beijing because he was on a tour to inspect flood-hit regions. “To make up for the inconvenience, I offer you a tour of the city,” he said.

The tour was a 20-minute drive through the central China city.

Jospin was keen to quash speculation among French journalists that the meeting far away from Beijing was a snub in retaliation for France’s sale of arms to Taiwan by a previous government in the early 1990s.