By IANS,
Kathmandu : Beijing has accused exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama of fomenting the Tibetan protests that have been rocking Nepal’s capital city Kathmandu through a leader holding “secret meetings with the ringleaders of some organisations”.
In an exclusive interview to Nepal’s official media, China’s ambassador to Nepal Zheng Xianglin accused the Nobel laureate and his India-based Tibetan government in exile of sending a leader to Kathmandu to incite the protests.
“A leader despatched by the ‘Tibetan government in exile’ is in Kathmandu now, holding secret meetings with the ringleaders of some organisations for ‘Tibetan independence’ … and plotting various anti-China activities,” the Chinese envoy told the Rising Nepal daily.
The interview came even as Beijing took Nepali journalists and senior politicians, including former deputy prime minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, on a state-sponsored trip to China.
Beijing also flew the Maoist Minister for Information and Communications Krishna Bahadur Mahara to China recently and has extended an invitation to party supremo Prachanda.
On Monday, a minor partner in the ruling alliance, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party, hosted a programme in Kathmandu valley to declare its support for the One China policy, that considers Tibet to be an inalienable part of the Chinese republic.
Zheng was invited to release a book that propagated the Chinese perspective on the summer riots in Tibet.
“The violence in Tibet is an attempt by separatists to made Tibet secede,” Zheng said. “But it is doomed to fail.”
The envoy claimed that Tibetans did not want freedom. The uprising, he said, was engineered by the exiled Dalai Lama, “who was becoming increasingly alienated in the international community”.
“Ninety-five percent of Tibetans do not recognise the Dalai Lama as their leader. He is now known more as a political figure than religious leader.”
Beijing has been urging Nepal’s government to impose tough punishment on the protesters in Kathmandu. However, Nepal, while allowing the use of excessive force against the unarmed and peaceful demonstrators, has been fighting shy of harsh measures, following an official warning by the US government not to violate the fundamental rights of the protesting Tibetans.
The criticism stung Beijing, which retaliated by accusing the US of interfering in the internal matters of a sovereign country.