Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama headed for the US yesterday and a long-awaited meeting with US President Barack Obama that has infuriated China.
For the Dalai Lama — vilified by Beijing as a “wolf in monk’s robes” — recognition by the White House is crucial to maintaining a critical international spotlight on Chinese treatment of his Himalayan homeland.
The Obama administration has stressed that the president is receiving the Dalai Lama as a spiritual rather than political leader, and the meeting will take place in the White House Map Room and not the Oval Office.
But such diplomatic nuances will do little to dampen the Tibetan’s enthusiasm and are not expected to mollify Chinese anger.
“The most important thing is that the meeting is taking place,” the Dalai Lama’s spokesman Tenzin Taklha said before leaving India with the Buddhist leader.
Dismissing Beijing’s denunciation of the White House get-together as “routine rhetoric,” Taklha said the Chinese government’s real concern was having the Tibet issue highlighted.
“No matter what China says, China cares about international opinion,” he said. “The president’s meeting with His Holiness is an expression of the international community’s concern and it sends a strong signal to the Chinese that they need to work with us to reach a solution.”
Obama had avoided a meeting with the Dalai Lama last year in hopes of starting off his relationship on a good foot with China.
It was the first time since 1991 that a US president had declined to host the exiled Tibetan leader during one of his occasional trips to Washington.
Today’s meeting comes at a delicate time for China-US ties amid a row over US arms sales to Taiwan, Beijing’s dispute with Google and trade and currency disagreements.
The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet. He denies China’s assertion that he wants independence for Tibet, insisting he is looking only for “meaningful autonomy.”
Taklha said the Nobel peace laureate would brief Obama on the situation in Tibet and the latest talks between his envoys and the Chinese authorities.
Talks in China last month — the first between the two sides since 2008 — marked the ninth round of a dialogue that has yielded no tangible progress in eight years.
Many observers believe the Chinese are simply stringing the Tibetan exiles along until the Dalai Lama dies, on the assumption that the Tibetan movement will wither without him.
“The Dalai Lama and the people around him have refused to realize this and that the talks have a strategic value for China,” said Elliot Sperling, an expert on Tibet at Indiana University, in the US.
“They’re useful for thwarting criticisms as to why the Chinese government isn’t talking to the Dalai Lama,” Sperling said.
In the absence of any movement in direct negotiations, White House support for the Dalai Lama and the leverage that brings assumes even more importance.
And the Dalai Lama’s secretary Chhime Chhoekyapa said it also sent a comforting signal to those living in Tibet.
“They will feel encouraged that the president of the United States, a global superpower, is meeting with His Holiness. It means the world has not forgotten them,” Chhoekyapa said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS