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Sarkozy set to meet with Dalai Lama in Poland

“We cannot have France’s conduct dictated to, even by our friends.” — Bernard Kouchner. French foreign minister

French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Gdansk yesterday for a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates during which he was to meet the Dalai Lama, a move that has China fuming.

As current holder of the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, the French leader’s decision to engage with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader has so far seen Beijing retaliate by scrapping a China-EU summit in France earlier this week.

Beijing also warned that multi-billion-dollar trade deals between China and France were in jeopardy should the meeting go ahead.

“We have not noticed any kind of start of a boycott of our products,” a French presidential official said yesterday, emphasizing that France and China needed each other during a period of economic crisis.

Sarkozy was set to become the only European head of state to meet the Dalai Lama while holding the EU’s rotating presidency.

Asked on Friday in the northern Polish city whether he thought the French president might cancel the meeting with him, as has happened twice in the past, the Dalai Lama said: “Wait until tomorrow. I don’t know.”

Commenting on whether EU-China relations and trade could suffer over his planned meeting with Sarkozy, the Dalai Lama said: “China also needs Europe.”

“The original initiative of some pressure, sometimes is not followed by action,” he said.

France is digging in its heels, saying the meeting will go ahead and calling for economic ties to be spared from retribution, especially during the financial crisis.

“We cannot have France’s conduct dictated to, even by our friends,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with the Dalai Lama yesterday in Gdansk, where, as a past recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he had been invited to ceremonies marking 25 years since Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity icon Lech Walesa received the honor.

The former union leader is regarded as a key figure in the peaceful collapse of communism in Poland in 1989. The Dalai Lama, now 73, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize the same year.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso attended yesterday’s ceremonies in Gdansk.

The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, has sought “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet since he fled his homeland following a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule, nine years after Chinese troops invaded the region.

China argues that he is actually seeking full independence, something he on Friday called a “totally baseless” claim.

“When China becomes more democratic, with freedom of speech, with rule of law and particularly with freedom of the press ... once China becomes an open, modern society, then the Tibet issue, I think within a few days, can be solved,” the Dalai Lama said on Friday.

Addressing the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday, he said China lacked the moral authority to be a true superpower.

The head of France’s Tibetan community, Wangpo Bashi, told radio France-Info yesterday, “The Dalai Lama will raise human rights issues and above all the very urgent situation of Tibet ... where the situation nearly resembles that of martial law,” during the afternoon meeting with Sarkozy.

The meeting is “a very strong signal” for Tibetans, he said.
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