China warns Obama against meeting Dalai Lama at White House

BEIJING // China warned US president Barack Obama against meeting with the Dalai Lama at the White House, saying that hosting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader could damage mutual trust.

Mr Obama has met the Dalai Lama several times before and calls the monk, who is revered by Tibetans but portrayed by Beijing as a dangerous separatist, “a good friend”.

The tete a tete, planned for Wednesday will - as usual - take place behind closed doors in an effort to avoid angering China, which accuses the Nobel peace laureate of using "spiritual terrorism" to seek independence for Tibet.

“China’s foreign ministry has launched solemn representations with the US side, expressing our firm opposition to such an arrangement,” foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

“If such meeting goes through, it will send a wrong signal to the separatist forces seeking Tibet independence and it will damage mutual trust and cooperation,” he added.

The Dalai Lama — who has lived in exile in India since a failed 1959 uprising — has for decades called for more Tibetan autonomy rather than independence.

Beijing maintains he is a “wolf in monk’s clothing” and vigorously lobbies against foreign leaders meeting him.

Mr Obama made a high-profile public appearance with the Dalai Lama last year at a prayer breakfast in Washington, calling him “a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion.”

But three prior meetings were held privately, and Obama was criticised in 2010 for obliging the 80-year-old, clad in his characteristic red robes and flip flops, to leave the White House through a back door and walk past piles of snow and bags of rubbish.

Obama’s schedule indicated the Wednesday meeting would be held away from the cameras in the White House Map Room, not the Oval Office.

* Agence France-Presse