Twenty years after the Strasbourg Proposal, one is always surprised to read that the Chinese top leadership is open to talks 'if the Dalai Lama renounces independence.' President Jiang Zemin in the 1990s, and today Premier Wen Jiabao or President Hu Jintao have repeated the same point.

Don't they know that the Dalai Lama has renounced independence? For a long time, I wondered if the Chinese were so intellectually bankrupt not to understand what the Dalai Lama has declared hundred of times.

Reading whatever has been published on the subject as well as the several interviews I had made, the real problem became clear. In a letter sent by the Dalai Lama to President Jiang in September 1992, the Tibetan leader wrote: 'It is an established fact that Tibet and China existed as separate countries in the past. However, as a result of misrepresentations of Tibet's unique relationship with the Mongol and Manchu emperors, disputes arose between Tibet and the Kuomintang and present Chinese governments. The fact that the Chinese government found it necessary to conclude a '17-Point Agreement' with the Tibetan government in 1951 clearly shows the Chinese government's acknowledgement of Tibet's unique position.'

While history is not 'negotiable' for the Dalai Lama, this truth is not acceptable for the Chinese who would like to rewrite the past of the Land of Snows. Were they to accept the Dalai Lama's historical point, it would be an acknowledgement that Tibet has not always been theirs and that China had invaded an independent country in 1950. It would have serious consequence in terms of international law, and also of legitimacy for their rule, not only in Tibet, but in other 'nationalities' areas as well.

Image: Tibetan demonstrators with the 'Tibetan freedom torch' on May 16, 2008 in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: Accept Tibet's reality: Dalai Lama tells China

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