WUC requests support from Dalai Lama

• Source: Global Times
• [07:12 July 16 2009]
• Comments

By Kang Juan

The office of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, denied yesterday that it had received a request from the US-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) seeking cooperation, a response that Chinese experts said would be indicative of the Dalai Lama's reluctance to be connected with the organization believed behind the riots in Xinjiang.

Alim Seytoff, a WUC spokesman, called on the Dalai Lama this week in a letter to cooperate with the group in a “global action” against the Chinese government on behalf of WUC President Rebiya Kadeer, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA), which said it received a copy of the letter from the Dalai Lama's office in New Delhi.

This is the first time that the WUC has explicitly said it hoped to obtain support and cooperation from the Dalai Lama since the July 5 riots in Urumqi, the report said.

However, Tenzin Taklha, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama's office, told the Global Times by phone yesterday that his office hadn't received such a letter from the WUC.

Taklha declined to say whether the exiled Tibetans would show support to the WUC. “We are dedicated to seeking mutually agreeable solutions,” he said.

Pan Zhiping, a senior researcher at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times yesterday that the Dalai Lama may fear that closer ties with the WUC would have a negative impact on his reputation and influence in the West.

Western governments have been largely muted in response to the riots in Urumqi, and that is because the Uygurs “lack a charismatic figure such as the Dalai Lama to lead them,” according to a report in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail.

The report noted that the United States has adopted a mild tone, with President Barack Obama merely asking all parties in Xinjiang “to exercise restraint.”