As expected, the Dalai Lama accepted China’s offer to hold talks, but he has one request: the discussions must be serious.

From the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala, the Buddhist spiritual leader welcomed the statement made by the Chinese officials in New Delhi Saturday on Saturday and said he is looking forward to talk with Beijing about the problems of Tibet.

“Basically talk is good,” said Tibet’s spiritual leader from Dharamshala, the Indian city where His Holiness chose to stay in exile since 1959, when an uprising against the Chinese rule failed.

This would be the first meeting between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese high officials after the protests that started in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, turned violent and ended with a bloody crackdown of the Chinese police and army on the demonstrators.

China announced on Friday that its officials have agreed to hold talks with the Dalai Lama or with his representatives. During the same day, Tibetan exile Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche underlined a key factor necessary for a successful meeting: the situation in Tibet must return to normal. The violence must end.

The Dalai Lama said that he won’t attend the meeting if it’s made only to appease international concern ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August. Such a meeting would be “fruitless” said the 72-year-old Nobel peace laureate. He added that he wanted "a thorough discussion" of the troubles concerning the China-Tibet relations, a meeting that would find out "what is the cause of this problem and how to solve it."

The Dalai Lama has underlined a very important aspect which came as a response to the Chinese accusations that he is a "splittist" who aims to break Tibet away from China.

His Holiness denied the charge by saying that he struggles to obtain a "cultural autonomy" for Tibet rather than independence.