China, under pressure from international community to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama, on Friday said it will soon have a meeting with a 'private representative' of Tibetan spiritual leader.
Coverage: Tibet Revolts
'In view of the requests repeatedly made by the Dalai side for resuming talks, the relevant department of the central government will have contact and consultation with Dalai's private representative in the coming days,' Xinhua news agency said quoting an unnamed official.
'The policy of the central government towards Dalai has been consistent and the door of dialogue has remained open,' the official was quoted as saying.
China has been insisting that the doors for the dialogue with the Dalai Lama, living in exile in India, were open but he must give up what it called his 'separatist activities', stop attempts to 'sabotage' the Beijing Olympics and accept Tibet and Taiwan as inalienable parts of China.
The Dalai Lama, whom China has accused of having orchestrated the recent violence in Tibet and elsewhere during the most vicious anti-government protests in two decades that have left 20 people dead, has insisted that he was not seeking independence of Tibet and was ready for a dialogue with the Chinese government.
'It is hoped that through contact and consultation, the Dalai side will take credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China, stop plotting and inciting violence and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games so as to create conditions for talks,' Xinhua quoted the official as saying.
China has been coming under mounting global pressure, including from US President George W Bush, to hold dialogue with the Dalai Lama since the anti-government protests erupted in Tibet which was followed by Chinese crackdown in the Himalayan region.
The Dalai Lama had said in the US a week ago that his representatives were holding private talks with Beijing, describing it as 'some efforts through private channels'.
He had also said the talks were still in 'full mystery'.
China, while maintaining that the door for talks were open as long as its conditions were met, has been putting the blame on the Dalai Lama, saying the barrier for the dialogue was on his side.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu had on Thursday said that the door for dialogue was 'definitely' open if the Dalai Lama immediately stopped 'all separatist and disruptive activities'.
Asked about a letter reported to have been written by the Tibetan leader to Chinese President Hu Jintao last month to send representatives to Tibet to calm down the situation there, she said: 'I don't think Hu has replied to the Dalai's letter'.
"I have no information in this regard," she said, when questioned if the Chinese government had received the Dalai Lama's letter.
In his first public comments after the unrest broke out in Tibet recently, Hu had talked tough, defending Beijing's crackdown in Tibet, saying China's conflict with the Dalai Lama related to national unification.
"Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem. It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland. The barrier to contacts and talks does not lie on our side, but on the side of the Dalai Lama," Hu had told Australian prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is among the Western leaders who have put up pressure on Beijing to hold talks with the 72-year old Nobel laureate.