Meeting between Dalai Lama envoys & Chinese officials today is the first between the two sides since anti-govt protests erupted in Tibet

BEIJING: Beijing lambasted the Dalai Lama as a criminal on Saturday as representatives of the exiled Buddhist leader headed for a meeting in southern China on the most serious unrest in Tibet for nearly two decades. 
 
The barrage of criticism suggested the government was in no mood to compromise following riots and protests in Tibet, which have shaken China’s preparations for the Beijing Olympics and stoked Western criticism of its rule in the mountain region. “Patriotic people of Tibet strongly condemn and vehemently denounce the litany of crimes committed by the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers,” said the official Tibet Daily, according to the region’s official news website (www.chinatibetnews.com). “They (the aides) should have reached China ... we can’t have great expectations (about the talks),” Chhime Chhoekyapa, a senior aide to the Dalai Lama, said.

He said the venue for the meeting would be Shenzhen, a boomtown across the border from Hong Kong in southern China. The Olympic torch’s world tour has been dogged by protests over China’s rule in Tibet that have angered Beijing and provoked counter-rallies both at home and abroad by patriotic Chinese.    China proposed the talks last week after Western governments urged it to open new dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who says he wants a high level of autonomy and religious freedom for the homeland he fled in 1959.  
 
The Tibet Daily repeated charges that the Dalai Lama’s ‘clique’ orchestrated deadly riots on March 14 in the regional capital, Lhasa, to wreck preparations for August’s Olympics.    “The Dalai clique’s hopes of achieving Tibetan independence are increasingly dim, and at this time when their hopes have been destroyed, the Dalai clique launched a bloody violent event — their last bout of madness,” said the paper.