DHARAMSHALA, India--The Tibetan prime minister-in-exile said Sunday that talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials had began in Shenzhen, China, but gave no other details.
"They [the talks] have started this morning. The envoys will come back to India on Tuesday or Wednesday," Samdhong Rinpoche told AFP in the Indian hill station of Dharmshala where the government-in-exile is located.
He added that details of the talks would only be known after the envoys had returned.
Tibetan leaders have played down expectations for the Shenzhen talks, and said their priority was to end the current crisis in Tibet.
"Our immediate concern is for the repression to end and all restrictions on Tibetans should be lifted," the government-in-exile's spokesman, Thubten Samphel, said earlier Sunday.
