Dalai Lama envoys meet Chinese officials in Switzerland

Tibetan envoys of the Dalai Lama and Chinese representatives ended two days of negotiations in Switzerland Friday in their first meeting outside Chinese soil, the spiritual leader's office said. Five Tibetan representatives met Chinese officials at China's embassy in the Swiss capital, Bern, as part of the ongoing contacts between the two sides, the Dalai Lama's office said in a statement.
The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 and direct ties between him and Beijing collapsed in 1993. They were renewed in 2002.
Since then China and Tibetan representatives have met four times to discuss a possible return of Tibetan exiles as well as the question of autonomy for Tibet, in line with a pledge Beijing offered a year after it invaded the region in 1950.
The statement said the five-member Tibetan delegation was led by Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, who represented the Dalai Lama in the three previous rounds of talks which were held in Beijing.
The other members comprised Tsegyam Ngaba, the Dalai Lama's envoy in Taiwan, and Bhuchung Tsering, a member of a task force set up by the Tibetan government-in-exile which is headquartered in the northern Indian hilltown of Dharamsala.
The closed-door talks with the high-powered Chinese delegation were also attended by Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
"His holiness (the Dalai Lama) hopes the process will move forward to bring about substantive negotiations on the Tibet problem," the statement said without elaborating.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Bern declined to comment.
"The session is over, they're going back to India," a member of the Office of Tibet in Geneva told AFP.
Although Switzerland is a neutral venue, with 1,540 Tibetan exiles it is also home to one of the largest Tibetan communities outside the region, and the largest outside Asia.
The Dalai Lama, who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to Tibet's non-violent liberation, has given up his original demands for his homeland's independence and instead talks of a "meaningful autonomy" to preserve Tibet's culture, language and environment.
India has played host to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile since the spiritual leader fled Tibet disguised as a soldier in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. There now are more than 200,000 Tibetan refugees living in India by official counts.