Agence France Press: April 11, 2006

Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will be in the United States when Chinese leader Hu Jintao makes his first trip to the White House this month, as Washington steps up a drive to help resolve the Tibet question.

Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will be in the United States when Chinese leader Hu Jintao makes his first trip to the White House this month, as Washington steps up a drive to help resolve the Tibet question.

The Dalai Lama will arrive in San Francisco on Friday to meet with Tibetan exiles and participate in inter-faith dialogues ahead of his two week trip to South America beginning April 27, Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet, told AFP.

Hu is due to arrive in Seattle on April 18 and depart for the US capital the following day, before his landmark meeting with US President George W. Bush on April 20.

“It is not unprecedented that the two will be in the United States at the same time,” Saunders said, citing their presence last September, when Hu attended a United Nations Summit.

The Tibet issue is expected to be on the Bush-Hu agenda as Beijing signals a willingness to allow the spiritual leader to return to China if he “completely abandons” independence ambitions for the Himalayan region.

“President Bush is certainly expected to raise the issue of a possible visit by His Holiness to China and express his support for the ongoing dialogue between the envoys of His Holiness and Beijing,” Saunders said.

“President Bush knows that His Holiness ultimately wants to return home but his first priority is the fate of the Tibetan people in Tibet,” she said.

Bush met the Dalai Lama at the White House in November last year before he travelled to Beijing for talks with Hu and urged the Chinese leadership to invite the Dalai Lama to China, saying the spiritual leader had “no desire”
for an independent Tibet.

In March, the Dalai Lama made an open request to Beijing to go on a pilgrimage to China and Ye Xiaowen, China’s religious affairs chief, said it could be allowed if he “completely abandons” independence ambitions.

The 70-year-old Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 when Beijing crushed an anti-Chinese uprising, had a decade ago offered to renounce independence for genuine autonomy for his six million people.

He had set up his government-in-exile in the northern Indian hilltop town of Dharamsala.

China sees its occupation of Tibet since 1950 as a liberation of the region that has saved the Tibetan people from feudal oppression.

“Ye Xiaowens statement is a significant acknowledgement that China has not ruled out the possibility of a visit by the Dalai Lama,” Saunders said.

Ahead of Hu’s trip, China allowed a 34-year-old nun, Phuntsog Nyidrol, who was jailed for 15 years, to seek medical treatment in the United States.

As the former Chinese Communist Party’s secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Hu presided over the imposition of martial law in the region, resulting in the imprisonment of many hundreds of Tibetans, including Nyidrol.

“It is unlikely that a leader of modern China would want this to be remembered as his sole legacy on the Tibet issue,” Saunders said. “We hope that Mr Hu may bear in mind that resolving the issue peacefully could have a profound and beneficial impact not only on Tibet but also on China’s future.”