■ CANADA
Dalai Lama issues plea
The Dalai Lama asked Canada to take in thousands of Tibetan refugees living in exile in Nepal and India, he said in an interview with the daily Globe and Mail, published on Wednesday. The Tibetan spiritual leader told the newspaper he had made the request during formal talks with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday. During the meeting, the Dalai Lama said he thanked Harper for Canada having previously accepted 4,000 Tibetan refugees and asked: "Please take a few thousand more." Immigration officials, however, were cool to the proposal, saying the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) does not view Tibetans as a population in need of resettlement because they are not facing persecution in India. "According to the UNHCR, they're not facing persecution in India. But having said that, we are prepared to review applications on a case-by-case basis if they're referred to us by the UNHCR," said Mike Fraser, spokesman for Immigration Minister Diane Finley.
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