C.Raja Mohan

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 With China offering talks on Tibet, and the Dalai Lama welcoming the proposal, it would seem a welcome breakthrough is at hand. Not so fast. Beijing and the Tibetan Government — in exile in Dharamsala — both need the talks, but may find it difficult to start them. Without some credible mutual reassurances, the ‘talks about talks’ may go nowhere. Beijing has sensed that failure to show political flexibility now could well ruin the Beijing Olympics. The Dalai Lama too recognises that this is Beijing’s most vulnerable moment and needs to make the most of it. Beyond that, there is little agreement on how to proceed.

Given the failure of the previous six rounds of talks during 2002-07 to produce any results, the Dalai Lama naturally wants result-oriented talks. Not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama’s positive reaction to the Chinese proposal on the proposed talks was hedged in reservations. He was quoted as saying, “We need to have serious talks about how to reduce the Tibetan resentment within Tibet,” he said. But a meeting aimed merely at “showing the world that they are having dialogue, then it is meaningless,” the Dalai Lama concluded.

The Dalai Lama also needs some political gestures from Beijing, including an end to the current harsh crackdown in Tibet. As the prime minister of the Tibetan Government in Exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said, “the present circumstances in Tibet do not appear to be an appropriate platform for a meaningful dialogue.”

Having whipped up nationalist outrage against the Dalai Lama in the last few weeks and after calling him a “wolf in monk’s robes”, Beijing will find it hard to demonstrate the necessary good faith.

American role

The Bush Administration appears to have played a key role in working out a face saver between Beijing and the Dalai Lama. On April 21, the US Under Secretary of State and special envoy to Tibet, Paula Dobriansky, held extensive talks with the Dalai Lama — who was travelling in the US.

The same day, in an article published in the pages of the Washington Post, Dobriansky insisted that a “meaningful dialogue” between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and Beijing is “the only way forward”.

That the Bush Administration was applying pressure on the Dalai Lama to agree to talks was apparent from the first sentence in her article, “When I meet with the Dalai Lama today, I fully expect him to reaffirm his strong commitment to engaging Chinese officials in dialogue.”

Dobriansky also urged “China’s leaders to address Tibetan concerns by opening a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who has advocated a ‘middle way’ that embraces autonomy for Tibet within China and rejects seeking independence. “While Beijing’s initial reaction was to criticise the American “intervention” in the internal affairs of China, within three days, the official news agency Xinhua announced the turn-about on engaging the Dalai Lama.

Getting the two sides to accept the principle of talks is the easier part. The Bush Administration might have to do a lot more to get the talks going. Nevertheless, the US diplomacy on Tibet should serve as an important lesson for the UPA government.

Although the Indian Foreign Office was among the first to call for talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, the political leadership appears to have panicked at the thought of taking a steadfast and creative approach to the unfolding crisis in Tibet.

Nuclear Bangladesh

In his visit to Dhaka last week, the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has apparently agreed to consider Bangladesh’s request to build its first nuclear power reactor in Rooppur. So carried away was Dhaka, that it started talking about replicating the model of “Sino-Pak nuclear cooperation”.

One would have thought Dhaka had every reason to avoid the kind of clandestine nuclear cooperation that exists between China and Pakistan. Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is eligible for international civil nuclear cooperation.

Consider the following paradox: while the Chinese Communists and their Indian comrades are determined to wreck the Indo-US civil nuclear initiative and grind India’s civilian nuclear programme to a halt, Beijing will contribute to the expansion of nuclear programmes in our immediate neighbourhood.

The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg