The Dalai Lama sends envoys to China once again, as our correspondent returns to Tibet

CHINESE officials appear ready to resume talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama after a 15 month lapse, but in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, the authorities remain on guard. Few expect the talks to make much progress, nor tensions in Tibet to subside.

As the Dalai Lama’s envoys headed to China for what are expected to be the first discussions between the two sides since November 2008, small groups of helmeted riot police, some of them carrying rifles, remained deployed near important temples in the centre of Lhasa. Your correspondent, who is on a rare authorised trip to Tibet by a foreign journalist, saw hundreds of worshipers walking and prostrating themselves in ritual circuits around the Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s holiest shrine, as the police watched impassively. Security was conspicuous but appeared far less intense than in the aftermath of the Tibetan rioting that erupted in Lhasa in March 2008. …