Nashua, New Hampshire (CNN) – President Barack Obama still plans to meet with exiled Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama despite recent protests from Chinese officials, according to the White House.
"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," said Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton aboard Air Force One.
"To be clear, the U.S. considers Tibet to be a part of China and we have human rights concerns about the treatment of Tibetans," Burton continued.
Although a date for the meeting has not been announced, Burton emphasized that the White House expects to continue maintaining a positive relationship with China despite the protests against the meeting with the Dalai Lama.
"[As] the president has expressed, we expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can work out issues of mutual concerns such as climate, the global economy, and nonproliferation, and discuss frankly and candidly those issues where we disagree," Burton said.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Dalai Lama said Thursday that an opportunity for President Obama to raise the Tibet issue with Chinese leader Hu Jintao - and the spiritual leader's strategic desire to avoid alienating the Chinese president ahead of Obama's visit to that nation - were more important than the chance to press his own political agenda in person during his latest visit to Washington.
"(A) more serious discussion is better than just a picture," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview.
".... I have no disappointment," he said, in the decision to postpone a personal meeting with Obama until after next month's presidential visit to China.
"(Obama) already... indicated that he is going to speak with the Chinese.
And it seems that he possibly (will be) seriously engaging with the Chinese about the Tibet issue," among other issues like global warming, he said.
WASHINGTON (CNN) –President Barack Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama after the president's trip to China, the State Department said Monday.
"The United States government thinks that he is an internationally revered religious and cultural figure, he is a Nobel Prize laureate," State
Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
"The president has decided that he will meet with the Dalai Lama at a mutually agreeable time."
From CNN Politics
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