WITH THE INITIATIVE OF THE RADICAL ALLIANCE, EPP, LIBERALS AND GREENS, THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF HH THE DALAI LAMA'S PROPOSAL OF DIALOGUE WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS IS REAFFIRMED.
DECLARATION OF MR. OLIVIER DUPUIS, SECRETARY OF THE TRANSNATIONAL RADICAL PARTY AND MEP.
Strasbourg, March 14, 1997- The European Parliament has reversed the resolution presented by the Socialists, Mr. COLAJANNI and COLON Y NAVAL. The Socialists with this resolution, which obstructed and fiercely opposed the initiatives in favor of the solution of the tragic Tibetan question, wanted to reduce the Tibetan issue to a mere request of religious and cultural autonomy.
On the contrary, in the adopted resolution it is confirmed the position of the Tibetan government in exile recently restated by the Dalai Lama himself in Strasbourg at the European Parliament. This position proposes the opening of negotiations without preconditions asking full autonomy for Tibet on everything but defense and international affairs.
In the resolution adopted last night in Strasburg, the European Parliament asks the UN to put the Tibetan issue in the agenda of the decolonization committee.
As regards this grave episode, Mr. Olivier DUPUIS, General Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and Eurodeputy of the Reformers List has declared:
"This attempt of the Socialist Group, fortunately failed, is indicative of how certain political forces will never change. After years of opposition to any political or parliamentary initiative at the EP (from the vote against the radicals' amendments for establishing helps for Tibetan refugees, to the opposition against a free information on Tibet, just to mention a few) or in Italy (from the prohibition to city councils to fly the Tibetan flag on March 10, the Tibetan uprising day, to the current governative position against the presentation at the UN's Human Rights Commission in Geneva of a resolution on Human Rights in China and Tibet) these deputies, once supporters of the Soviet totalitarian Communist regime, are today the interpreters of a supposed "good will" of the Chinese Communist regime regarding the whole situation in China and the occupied and oppressed territories of Tibet, East Turkestan and Mongolia.
A good will that keeps between 600.000 and 800.000 political prisoners in the "laogai" concentration camps in terrible conditions."
Transnational Radical Party
Tel. 32-2-230.41.21
Fax. 32-2-230.36.70