Barack Obama and Dalai Lama meet for White House talks
Barack Obama and Dalai Lama meet for White House talks
Also In The News
|
By Matt Hallam. |  |
Thursday, 18, Feb 2010 05:59
By Matthew Champion.
Barack Obama has welcomed the Dalai Lama for talks at the White House despite repeated and firm objections to the meeting from China.
The Dalai Lama has met with every US president for the last two decades but the White House had been put under intense pressure by China to cancel the planned talks, which coincide with a visit by the Tibetan spiritual leader to the US.
Emerging from talks at the White House the Dalai Lama, who is also meeting US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, said the president had expressed his "great concern" and "full commitment" towards a "middle way approach" in healing relations between Beijing and the Tibetan people.
His spokesman Lodi Gyari and President Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs had both been unable to give assurances on Wednesday that a televised appearance would follow the meeting.
Relations between the US and China have become increasingly tense in recent months, with the White House apparently unwilling to jeopardise outstanding economic, military and environmental issues by championing the meeting with the Dalai Lama.
This year Beijing has reacted angrily to veiled accusations from Google that it was behind a cyber attack upon human rights activists' email accounts and US plans to sell $6.4 billion of defensive weapons to Taiwan.
The bad blood adds to the disagreements that characterised President Obama's first year in office including rows over trade imports, a lack of Chinese support on stricter sanctions against Iran and Beijing's unmoving stance on carbon emissions at Copenhagen last year.
China, which has a longstanding position of warning foreign leaders off meeting the Dalai Lama, seized control of Tibet in 1950, while the Dalai Lama fled into exile nine years later aged 23 following a failed uprising.
Beijing regards the Buddhist leader as leading a "splittist" agenda, although he is now in semi-retirement after leading a non-violent campaign for greater autonomy in his homeland, his efforts winning him the Nobel peace prize in 1989.
China had repeatedly insisted such a meeting would threaten relations between the two countries since it was first mooted.
"We urge the US side to fully understand the high sensitivity of Tibet-related issues, and honour its commitment to recognise Tibet as part of China and to oppose 'Tibet independence'," said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
"China urges the US... to immediately call off the wrong decision of arranging for President Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama... to avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations."
A meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama - both Nobel peace prize laureates - was always likely, however.
Mr Obama's predecessor George Bush met the Buddhist leader three times in his eight years in office and in 2007 awarded him the congressional gold medal, the highest US civilian award.
"He's a spokesman for Tibetan rights," Mr Gibbs explained earlier. "The president looks forward to an engaging and constructive meeting.
"We think we have a mature enough relationship with the Chinese that we can agree on mutual interests, but also have a mature enough relationship that we know the two countries are not always going to agree on everything."