Beijing: Taking exception to the US Senate inviting exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, an angry China on Friday lodged a protest with Washington.
The 78-year-old monk yesterday delivered the customary prayer that opens each Senate session, after meeting President Barack Obama at the White House last month. “We express strong dissatisfaction with and strong opposition to the meeting between US congress leaders and lawmakers with the Dalai Lama.
China has lodged solemn representations with the US,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang told media briefing here.
“I want to point out that Tibet is a sacred and inalienable part of China’s territory.
Tibet-related affairs fall totally within China’s domestic affairs,” he said. “What Dalai has been doing and saying over past several decades has shown that he is a political exile who has been engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion,” Qin said. Obama has met with the Dalai Lama twice earlier in 2010 and 2011. “China urges the US congress to abide by its commitment of recognising Tibet as part of China, not supporting Tibetan independence, stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs within Tibet-related affairs, and cease to connive with and support anti-China separatist activities by Tibet independence forces,” Qin said. “US should also do more to promote friendship between the two peoples as well as the growth of our bilateral relations instead of the other way around,” he said. The US move to invite Dalai Lama to offer prayers at US Senate will certainly affect the Sino-US relationship as China always opposes foreign leaders meeting with the Dalai Lama, Xin Qiang, a deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told state-run Global Times. (PTI)
