Dalai Lama urges fellow Tibetan exiles to improve contacts with Chinese people

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The Dalai Lama has urged his fellow Tibetan exiles in India to improve contacts with ordinary Chinese people, saying he has always had faith in them, report agencies.
By contrast, he argued, the Chinese government remained repressive in Tibet and he warned of "great danger" if the exiles did not exercise caution. He welcomed a decision by exiles to back his policy of autonomy, rather than independence, from China. The veteran leader, 73, also sought to end rumours he was planning to retire. Speaking to exiles in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala, from which he has led the Tibetan cause for nearly 50 years, he said: "My faith in the Chinese people has never been shaken". He said China was changing and the Tibetan movement should seek to take advantage of that.
But his faith in the Chinese government, he added, was "getting thinner", and he accused them of using "fear and ruthless suppression" to control Tibet.
Although Tibet has enjoyed long periods of autonomy or self-rule, China maintains that it has always been an integral part of its territory.
Chinese Communist forces invaded Tibet in 1950 and have ruled there ever since.
Under the Dalai Lama's so-called "Middle Way" approach, Tibetans would essentially stop pushing for the re-establishment of Tibet as an independent nation.
Total independence was "not practicable", he told the meeting in Dharamsala, India.
He was speaking after a week-long meeting of representatives of the Tibetan movement concluded that if China made no effort to meet the Dalai Lama's demands, then other options, including calls for independence and self-determination, would be put forward.
Delegates also suggested that the Dalai Lama's envoy should not return to China unless attitudes changed in Beijing.
China's authorities in Tibet made clear in recent days that they believed the exiles were still bent on independence.