French Parliamentarians to Visit Dharamsala
Dharamsala 19 March, 2005: A 21-member delegation of the French Deputies of the National Assembly, the Lower Chamber of the French Parliament, will visit Dharamshala from March 21-25, 2005 at the invitation of the Chairman of Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies (ATPD). This is the first French parliamentary delegation to visit Dharamsala, the seat of Central Tibetan administration, in India.
The delegation is led by Mr. Lionnel Luca, the President of Tibet group in the National Assembly. The group includes 13 MPs representing the entire major political parties in France and their assistants and 2 parliamentary TV crews. Representative Tashi Phuntsok will accompany the group from France.
The delegation will call on His Holiness the Dalai Lama on March 24. They will meet the Tibetan legislators and members of the Kashag, and will also observe proceedings of the current session of the ATPD. They will visit important Tibetan institutes and will meet with the Tibetan NGOs in Dharamsala as well.
The Tibet group in the National Assembly was established in 1991 and in the Senate, the Upper Chamber, in 2000. Currently there are 90 members in the former and 34 in the latter.
A delegation of 8 persons from the Senate (the Upper Chamber ) is expected to visit Dharamsala in April. As France is observing the Year of Tibet at the initiative of the Tibet Group in the National Assembly the visits to Dharamsala hold significance. The parliamentarians will have the opportunity to see the Tibetan community and their administration and it will certainly impact on their future activities for Tibet.
Report Courtesy – OoT, Paris