President Barack Obama defied warnings from China and welcomed to the White

President Barack Obama defied warnings from China and welcomed to the White House the Dalai Lama, who said that the US leader shared his concerns about human rights in Tibet.

The White House choreographed the Dalai Lama’s visit to be as low key as possible, barring the press and not announcing the meeting until hours before the Tibetan spiritual leader was set to close an 11-day trip to Washington.

A White House official said that the two Nobel Peace Prize winners spoke for 44 minutes in the Map Room, part of the White House’s residence and away from the Oval Office where presidents traditionally meet world leaders.

The Dalai Lama said that he felt close to Obama at a “human level” and that the US leader shared his concerns about the situation in Tibet, which the Buddhist leader fled in 1959 for safety in India.

Obama is “president of the greatest democratic country, so naturally he is showing concern about basic human values, human rights, religious freedom,” the Dalai Lama said after the meeting in response to a question from AFP.

The White House, in a statement announcing the meeting, also highlighted concerns about human rights and said Obama supported dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama’s representatives.

China had warned the United States not to receive the Dalai Lama and lodged an official protest after the meeting was announced, warning that Obama “could harm US-Chinese relations” if he went ahead.

Obama’s long silence on whether he would meet the Dalai Lama led several lawmakers to conclude that he rejected a meeting.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, welcomed Obama’s decision “to extend to the Dalai Lama the respect and courtesy he deserves as a globally respected leader.”

“This meeting is better late than never, but it remains disappointing that the Dalai Lama was squeezed in at the last minute after much apparent hemming-and-hawing from the White House due to objections from Beijing,” she said.

“This shouldn’t have been such a difficult decision,” said Ros-Lehtinen, a member of the rival Republican Party.

The State Department in its latest annual report described “severe cultural and religious repression” in Tibet along with China’s predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Source AFP