DHARAMSALA, JUNE 30: The envoys of Tibetan spiritual leader and temporal head Dalai Lama arrived in Beijing on Monday evening to hold the seventh round of talks on the vexed Tibet issue.

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s special envoy Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari and envoy Kelsand Gyaltsen have gone to China for the formal seventh round of discussions with the representatives of the Chinese leadership,” said a statement issued by the office of the Dalai Lama here in McLeodganj.

The Dalai Lama has asked the envoys to make every effort to alleviate the difficult situation of Tibetans in their homeland. He hopes that this round of talks will help resolve the long simmering issue through dialogue in the interest of stability, unity and harmony of all nationality in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the statement said.

The envoys will be accompanied by senior assistants Sonam N Dagpo, Bhuchung K Tsering—both members

of the Tibetan Task Force on Sino-Tibetan Negotiations—and Jigmey Passang from the Secretariat of the Tibetan Task Force, the statement said.

A week ago, a marathon meeting of the task force had been held to formulate the strategy for talks with the leadership of the PRC.

Besides the Dalai Lama and members of the task force, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-exile had also attended the meeting.

On May 4, Dalai Lama’s envoys and representatives of the Chinese leadership in Shenzhen had agreed to hold the seventh round of the dialogue process, which began in 2002, on a convenient date. The statement signed by secretary to the Dalai Lama Chhime R Chhoekyapa had said “this meeting is taking place at a crucial time”.

The discussion will take place on July 1 and 2 in Beijing.

Tracking the Talks

•January 2002: Envoys of Dalai Lama meet Chinese officials outside China in the first face-to-face meeting since August 1993

•May 25 - July 8, 2003: A second round of talks is held between envoys of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership during the Tibetan team’s trip to Beijing and parts of Tibet

•September 2004: A third round of talks is held during the Tibetan team’s trip to Beijing and parts of Tibet.

•June 30, July 1, 2005: A fourth round of meetings between the Tibetan team and the Chinese leadership is held in Bern, Switzerland. Tibetans say that the trip is designed to “move the ongoing process to a new level of engagement aimed at bringing about substantive negotiations to achieve a mutually acceptable solution to the Tibetan issue”.

•February 15 - 23, 2006: Envoys of the Dalai Lama visit China and took part in the fifth round of talks with their Chinese counterparts in Guilin, Guangxi Province of China.

•June 2007: Tibetan envoys meet Chinese authorities for sixth round of talks