Dalai Lama told to take advantage of talks

BEIJING - China called Tuesday on the Dalai Lama to take advantage of its offer of fresh talks and stop sabotaging the Olympics, with just 100 days to go before the Games open in Beijing.
China told the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader he must end the violence in his homeland if the talks were to be a success, as the Tibet crisis continued to embarrass and anger the nation's communist rulers ahead of the Olympics.
As Beijing sought to pressure the Dalai Lama, it faced a growing diplomatic row with South Korea over protests during the Olympic torch's journey through Seoul over the weekend.
The troubled torch faced more controversy Tuesday in Vietnam, where police prevented major anti-Chinese rallies with what activists said were scores of detentions ahead of the Ho Chi Minh City leg.
Separately, China also announced the first batch of people had been jailed for their involvement in the Tibetan unrest that erupted last month and shone the Olympic spotlight on China's rule of the Himalayan region.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the Dalai Lama should 'cherish' China's offer to reopen talks, as she restated her government's many conditions for dialogue.
He should 'take concrete measures to stop his criminal acts of violence, stop his sabotage of the Beijing Olympics and his separatist activities, so as to create conditions for the next step of talks,' she said.
The talks would be the first known encounter between the two sides for a year, and China's offer to reopen dialogue, initially made Friday, was widely seen as a response to global pressure ahead of the Olympics.
However Jiang insisted China had not caved in to international pressure.
'The central government's contact and consultation with the Dalai Lama are completely the internal affairs of China,' she said.
'On the issues of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Chinese government and its people will never yield to any external pressure. We have the confidence and the capability to do well in our job.'
Jiang also struck a defiant tone following complaints from the South Korean government over violence by Chinese students in Seoul against Korean protesters who had targetted the torch relay there Sunday.
Although China has repeatedly denounced anti-Chinese mayhem in earlier legs of the torch relay, Jiang declined to directly condemn the behaviour of its own students.
'Some Chinese students came out to safeguard the dignity of the torch. I believe that's natural,' she said.
'We condemn large-scale violent demonstrations. As to the Chinese students and overseas Chinese, they just had some frictions with those who disrupted and sabotaged the torch relay there. That's totally different.'
South Korea on Tuesday vowed 'legal and diplomatic measures' in response to the violence by the students.
Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo said images of Chinese youths attacking Korean demonstrators had damaged national pride.
'Legal and diplomatic measures are necessary as the incident hurt national pride considerably,' South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Han as telling a cabinet meeting. He did not elaborate.
Meanwhile, 17 people were sentenced in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, to between three years and life in prison over their roles in the protests there on March 14, China's official Xinhua news agency announced.
Protests that began on March 10 in Lhasa to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against China's rule of the region escalated into widespread violence across the city on March 14.
Chinese authorities say 'rioters' killed 18 innocent civilians and a police officer in Lhasa on March 14, while a second officer was killed when protests spread to other parts of China with Tibetan populations.
China has insisted it reacted with restraint but Tibetan exiled groups say more than 150 people died in its crackdown.
Criticism of China's response has been one of the major rallying cries at protests dogging the torch relay.