WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hosted exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House Thursday, drawing an angry reaction from China and risking further damage to strained Sino-U.S. ties.
Obama sat down with the Dalai Lama -- who is reviled by the Chinese government as a dangerous separatist but admired by many around the world as a man of peace -- in the face of wider tensions over U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, China's currency practices and Internet censorship.
There was no welcome fanfare on Thursday, nor a public appearance with the president. The White House released only a single official picture, rather than allow independent photographers and reporters to see the two men together. This from a president who promised — and in some other ways has delivered — unprecedented transparency in his White House.
So Obama sat down with his fellow Nobel laureate in the Map Room instead of the Oval Office — a decidedly lower status in the White House venue pecking order. Such distinctions signaled to Beijing that the Tibetan monk was not being received as a political leader. Even the White House description of the talks was done on paper. The timing was a concession, too, as Obama declined to see the Dalai Lama during his Washington stay in October because it would have come before the president's November China visit.
Speaking to reporters on the White House driveway, playfully tossing a bit of snow at them and declaring himself "very happy" with the visit. The Dalai Lama spoke to the president about the promotion of human values, religious harmony, a greater leadership role for women around the world and the concerns of the Tibetan people, and that Obama was "very much supportive."
After the 70-minute meeting, the White House said Obama "commended the Dalai Lama's ... commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government."
Obama encouraged China and the Dalai Lama's envoys to keep up efforts to resolve their differences through negotiations, despite recent talks having yielded little progress.
The White House said Obama and the Dalai Lama also "agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China." "The president stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People's Republic of China," the White House said.
On the eve of the Dalai Lama's visit, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted the United States and China -- the world's largest and third-biggest economies -- have a "mature relationship" capable of withstanding disagreements.
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