Talks with China welcome, if serious: Dalai Lama

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Saturday guardedly welcomed China's offer for dialogue, suggesting that the talks will have meaning if these are serious.
 
"It depends on what kind of talk. If they are serious talks, they are most welcome," he told reporters in New Delhi, when asked whether he was happy with China's offer on Friday of talks with his envoys.
 
"Just mere seeing face to face is not (enough)," said the Tibetan leader soon after he arrived in New Delhi from the United States.
 
China, under pressure from the international community to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama, on Friday said that it will soon have a meeting with

a private representative of Tibetan spiritual leader.
 
Beijing 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 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, has insisted that he was not seeking independence of Tibet and was ready for a dialogue with the Chinese government.