China`s Wen Says Wants Good Ties With France

Wen said China wanted France to take `practical actions` and `positively respond` to the country`s core concerns.

China is committed to having friendly relations with France, Premier Wen Jiabao told visiting former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on Tuesday, after a spat last year with Paris over the Dalai Lama.

Beijing abruptly cancelled a China-EU summit late in 2008, angry over French President Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing condemns as a separatist.

The Dalai Lama says he only wants greater autonomy for the remote region, rather than outright independence.

"The responsibility for the present difficulties in Sino-French relations does not lie with the Chinese side," state news agency Xinhua paraphrased Wen as saying.

Wen said China wanted France to take "practical actions" and "positively respond" to the country's core concerns, Xinhua said without elaborating.

"The guiding principle of developing friendly Sino-French ties will not change, and the determination to push mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Europe will not change," Wen added.

Wen visited Europe between Jan. 27 and Feb. 2, although he did not go to France.

China has ruled remote and mountainous Tibet with an iron hand since People's Liberation Army troops marched into the region in 1950.

A week of demonstrations in Lhasa turned deadly on March 14, 2008, when a Tibetan crowd burned shops belonging to Han Chinese and Hui Muslims, killing 19 people.

That triggered demonstrations and marches throughout ethnically Tibetan regions, which were quelled after a few days by Chinese police and paramilitary troops.

Thousands of Tibetans were rounded up in the following crackdown across the region last year. Exiled Tibetan groups say many were beaten and some were killed.