BEIJING, Feb 22 – China on Friday urged the United States to immediately cancel the meeting between President Barack Obama and Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, saying it would cause “great damage” to bilateral relationship between both countries.
“We urge the United States to take China’s concerns seriously and not to facilitate or offer occasion for the Dalai Lama to conduct anti-China secessionist moves,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a press release here Friday.
Hua desribed the meeting between the US leader and the Dalai Lama as an unjustified interference with China’s domestic affairs, and a serious violation of the principles of international relations, and will cause great damage to China-US relations.
“The Tibetan issue is a domestic affair for China, there is no other country which bears the right to interfere,” she said, adding China was greatly concerned about the meeting, and had lodged solemn representations to the US side.
Hua’s comments came in response to the scheduled informal Obama-Dalai Lama meeting on Friday in the White House Map Room, a historically important room but of less significance than the Oval Office.
She said the Dalai Lama was a political figure in exile who was undertaking anti-China separatist activities in the name of religion China has long opposed foreign dignitaries meeting with the Dalai Lama,who fled to India and created the self-declared “Tibetan government in exile” in 1959 after a failed armed rebellion.
Obama had met the Dalai Lama twice before, in February 2010 and July 2011, which also led to similar protests from China.
-BERNAMA
