China urges Dalai Lama to return

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Beijing has renewed its call for Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to shed his independence goals and return to China.

A strongly worded magazine article called on the Dalai Lama, who ended on Saturday a hospital stay in India's financial capital of Bombay, to return to the "embrace of the motherland," the official news agency Xinhua said Sunday

"The Central Government still waits for the 14th Dalai Lama to give up his independence demand and end his exile life and return home," Xinhua late on Saturday quoted the article in China's Tibet magazine as saying.

The 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who lives in India, has called for international support for his non-violent campaign to gain Tibet independence from China, which annexed the Himalayan state in the 1950s.

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"The 14th Dalai Lama is reluctant to negotiate with the Central Government because he still stands for 'Tibetan Independence,"' it said.

The Dalai Lama spent seven days in a Bombay hospital for treatment of a bowel infection.

Revered by Tibetans as the reincarnation of a long line of Buddhist kings, the Dalai Lama has lived in the Himalayan town of Dharmasala since fleeing Tibet after a failed revolt against Chinese rule in 1959.