Dalai Lama ‘not disappointed’ at Obama

WASHINGTON — Tibet’s spiritual leader said Thursday he accepted President Barack Obama’s decision to avoid the Dalai Lama on a visit here, insisting he did not want to cause problems by upsetting China.

The Dalai Lama — who fled Chinese rule in Tibet more than 50 years ago — is paying a weeklong visit to Washington, his first in 18 years that will not include a meeting with the president.

“I do not want to create any inconvenience to anybody,” the Dalai Lama told CNN.

He said he accepted that Obama would not meet him “this time in order to avoid embarrassment to the Chinese president.”

“So I have no disappointment,” the Dalai Lama said.

The White House said Obama would meet with the exiled spiritual leader later this year but only after he pays his first presidential visit next month to China, with which the administration has been building warm relations.

Some US lawmakers and Tibet activists were furious over Obama’s move, fearing that China will interpret it as carte blanche to clamp down on dissent in the largely Buddhist territory where it sent troops in 1950.

But the Dalai Lama said he was content with Obama’s policy so far, noting the president has communicated with him through private channels.

“I think that is better in some cases,” the Dalai Lama said.

“I think more serious discussion is better than just a picture” of the two meeting, he said.

Obama met with the Dalai Lama when he was a senator. Last month, he dispatched a high-level delegation, including his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett — a close Chicago friend — to the Tibetan leader’s home-in-exile in Dharamshala, India to confirm his decision.

The Dalai Lama met in Washington with Maria Otero, the new US coordinator on Tibet policy, along with senior members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry.

But his visit marked a strong contrast from his last trip to Washington in 2007, when then-president George W. Bush took the unprecedented step of appearing publicly with the Dalai Lama to award him the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal.

By AFP