"I hope that the contacts with the Dalai Lama's side from today will yield a positive outcome," Hu Jintao said in Beijing, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

The fence-mending talks between Chinese officials and the two aides of the Dalai Lama, the first since an eruption of Tibetan protests and deadly riots in March, were scheduled to start on Sunday in the city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.

The unrest, the most serious challenge to Chinese rule in the mountainous region for nearly two decades, prompted anti-China protests around the world that disrupted the international leg of the Olympic torch relay and led to calls for Western leaders to boycott August's Beijing Games.

Hu said he hoped the Dalai Lama and his followers would 'show through action' that they have 'stopped separatist activities' and 'agitation of violence' to create conditions for further dialogue.

Security was tight outside the Shenzhen state guest house where the talks were to be held, and reporters were not allowed into the compound.

The official news agency Xinhua identified the Chinese negotiators as Zhu Weiqun and Sitar, both vice-ministers of the Communist Party's United Front Work and responsible for winning over religious leaders and ethnic minorities.

Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, the Dalai Lama's representatives in Washington and Switzerland respectively, arrived in China on Saturday.

A commentary in the Tibet Daily, mouthpiece of the Tibet regional government, accused the Dalai Lama of being a 'loyal tool of international anti-Chinese forces'.

Accusing the Nobel peace laureate of being the leader of a political group plotting to split Tibet from China, it said he was 'colluding with international anti-Chinese forces to spread rumours and slander to disrupt and sabotage the Olympic torch relay'.

EXPECTATIONS LOW

China hoped 'the Dalai side will take credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games so as to create conditions for talks', Xinhua said, quoting an unnamed official.

Some analysts said the repeated condemnations in the run-up to the talks suggested that China was in no mood to compromise following the riots in Tibet, which stoked Western criticism of its rule there.

Chhime Chhoekyapa, a senior aide to the Dalai Lama, said on Saturday that the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile 'can't have great expectations' from the talks.

There have been six rounds of dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama's envoys since 2002, with no breakthrough.

China proposed the latest talks last month after Western governments urged it to open new dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who says he wants a high level of autonomy, not independence, for the predominantly Buddhist Himalayan homeland he fled in 1959.

The Dalai Lama also says that he objects to violence and supports the Beijing Olympics. China says he is insincere.

China says the rioting in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, in March killed 18 'innocent civilians' and a police officer. It has not specified how many, if any, protesters have died but says troops used maximum restraint and avoided using lethal weapons.