Tibetan exiles in India believe improved relations between India and China would help talks between the Dalai Lama and Beijing over Tibet, a Tibetan spokesman said today.
The statement came a day after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, on a visit to China to forge closer bilateral ties, signed a joint declaration with Premier Wen Jiabao to resolve border disputes and boost trade.
"Vajpayee's visit will definitely pave the way for talks between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership," Mr Thubten Samphel, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile in India, said.
"Our argument is that relations between India and China based on mutual trust will enable India to play the role of a honest mediator to help resolve the Tibet issue," Mr Samphel said from the northern Indian hill station of Dharamasala, where the government-in-exile is based.
Mr Vajpayee's visit is the first by an Indian prime minister to China in a decade. Tibet has been a key irritant in ties between the Asian giants who fought a border war in 1962.
Beijing has long resented India's decision to give shelter to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, following a 1959 revolt against Chinese rule. About 100,000 Tibetan exiles also live across India.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman India had explicitly accepted that the Tibet Autonomous Region was a part of China. New Delhi agrees Tibet is an autonomous region of China, but the declaration makes India's position clearer and meets a key Beijing demand.