Obama-Dalai Lama meeting angers China

China has accused the US of harming bilateral relations behind Barack Obama, US president, met with the Dalai Lama, highlighting the challenges to efforts by Washington and Beijing to build more stable, friendly ties

Mr Obama’s move to meet with the Tibetan leader “severely interferes in China’s internal affairs, hurts the Chinese people’s feelings and harms China-US relations,” Ma Zhaoxu, foreign ministry spokesman, told in a statement on Sunday
Mr Obama greeted the Dalai Lama on Saturday for 45 minutes in spite of a stern appeal from Beijing to cancel the invitation
However, the White House made efforts to reduce publicity. The meeting was announced only hours in advance, shortly before the Dalai Lama was wrap up a 10-day visit to Washington, and was closed to the media. Mr Obama met the Tibetan religious leader in the private Map Room rather than in the Oval Office
The low-key arrangements followed the precedent set by Mr Obama’s first meeting with the Dalai Lama in February last year. George W. Bush, his predecessor, had greeted the Tibetan leader publicly and awarded him a medal
Speaking with the Dalai Lama, Mr Obama restated the official US position that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China and that Washington does not support independence for Tibet, but also underscored the importance of the protection of human rights of Tibetans in China, according to the White House
Following the meeting, China summoned Robert Wang, the number two at the US embassy in Beijing. Mr Ma also called on Washington to “immediately take measures to eliminate adverse fallout”
In the past, Beijing has often punished other countries for meetings between their political leaders and the Dalai Lama by suspending certain parts of bilateral dialogue. But any fallout that serious has typically occurred if bilateral relations were already strained
Both China and the US consider bilateral relations to be on a positive footing, following a summit in January between Hu Jintao, China’ s president, and Mr Obama at which they renewed their pledge for a cooperative relationship, and with the recent resumption of military ties

“China-US relations are good right now,” told Yuan Peng, a US expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations


In the meeting with Mr Obama, which came just above a week before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to meet with Dai Bingguo, Beijing’s senior foreign policy official, in Shenzhen, the Dalai Lama expressed hopes for an improvement in his relations with China with US help
The Tibetan religious leader does not advocate independence from China, but Beijing has labeled him a ‘splittist’, and numerous rounds of talks on the issue with the Chinese government have failed to produce results
The meeting with Mr Obama comes amid another crackdown by Chinese authorities in Tibet. Tibetan rights groups outside China say the path on which Tibetan Buddhists traditionally circumambulate the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former residence, has been closed as the government is building a stage in front of the palace for official celebrations of the 60th anniversary of what Beijing calls the peaceful liberation of Tibet
A first wave of such celebrations was held in May, but construction on a grand scale is under way in and about Lhase in preparation for more such events later this year, according to Woeser, a Tibetan writer in Beijing
The Tibetan Autonomous Region is closed to foreign journalists and foreign tourists have also been barred since earlier this year, making objective information around the situation there difficult to obtain
The lockdown follows protests in March at Kirti, a Tibetan monastery in Sichuan province, which led to the detention of hundreds of monks and local Tibetans,

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