Obama pilloried over ducking Dalai Lama to appease China
WASHINGTON: The loud sucking noise you hear? That's President Barack Obama kissing up to the Chinese. The Dalai Lama in Washington, as Barack Obama's administration insisted it still respected the Tibetan leader. Fellow Tibetan exiles welcomed the globetrotting 74-year-old monk as he arrived at his Washington hotel.
At least that's what supporters of Dalai Lama would have you believe after the U.S President passed up a meeting with the Tibetan leader in Washington DC this week – ostensibly to not offend Beijing ahead of his (Obama’s) visit to China next month.
It’s the first time in ten visits to the US in 18 years that the Dalai Lama has failed to meet with the American president. The political and diplomatic slight to the man widely admired in the US as brought forth a volley of criticism against Obama, hitherto hailed a champion of human rights.
Republicans are pillorying Obama for being a pussycat before the Chinese, and there have been murmurs of disapproval from the Democrats too..
"We regret that despite escalating human rights violations in Tibet, the White House has chosen not to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama...preferring a time that will be less irritating to the Chinese government and after the president’s own trip to China. We are concerned that this time may never come," says Katrina Lantos Swett, whose late father Tom Lantos led the move to present the Tibetan leader with a Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, awarded by then President Bush at a bipartisan ceremony.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to receive a human rights award in the US Capitol on Tuesday given by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a long time admirer of the Tibetan leader. President Obama is also very much in the capital. But there will be no meeting.
The White House says Obama’s decision not to meet Dalai Lama means no disrespect to the Tibetan leader, but there is little doubt in Washington what’s behind the decision. The US President is going to Beijing next month at a time the US is widely seen as a declining entity and China as a growing power. Washington needs Beijing’s cooperation on several international issues – from climate change to trade to Iran and other key geo-political issues.
US officials have said Obama will meet the Dalai Lama after he returns from Beijing, a fact that has been communicated to the Tibetan leader. Last month, the White House sent senior aides Valerie Jarrett and Maria Otero, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs and now special envoy for Tibet, to Dharamsala to convey the US position to the Dalai Lama.
"The president has decided that he will meet with the Dalai Lama at a mutually agreeable time," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday, while officials explained on background that the administration thought it more constructive to first engage Beijing on the Tibetan issue.
Won’t work, say Obama critics. "The Chinese are beginning to dictate what the Obama administration is doing," one Republican lawmaker was quoted as saying. "Do you think the Chinese will respect this? It’s a sign of weakness."
Obama’s handling of the matter will also be closely watched in New Delhi, which is suddenly facing a surfeit of prickly issues with China. The issue is complicated by the Dalai Lama’s scheduled visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China considers disputed territory, in November, around the same time Obama will be in Beijing.
According to some reports, the Obama administration is pressing the Dalai Lama not to muddy the Arunachal issue while the U.S is engaged in persuading Beijing to initiate talks with the Tibetan leader. Washington is also being accused of dragging its feet on the implementation of the understanding reached between the preceding Bush administration and India, to undertake searches in Arunachal Pradesh territory for US Air Force personnel who had gone missing in action during the Second World War.
The US is also said to be re-examining some of the joint military exercises it is conducting with India to eliminate those which may cause concern to China. "The Obama administration is showing signs of greater sensitivity to the concerns and interests of China than those of India. Reliable reports indicate that it is veering towards a policy of neutrality on the issue of Arunachal Pradesh, which has been a major bone of contention between India and China," B.Raman, a former senior Indian intelligence official who laid out the charges, said in an online article on Monday.
Meanwhile conservative circles have jumped on Obama’s Dalai Lama cop-out to pillory him and say his predecessor handled the matter more skillfully. President Bush met the Dalai Lama several times, most notably and controversially in 2007, when he awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Tibetan leader in a public ceremony.
Although the Bush administration said the meeting and the award was not meant to antagonize China, the President’s reference to religious oppression brought a sharp response from the thin-skinned Beijing which called it an affront to the budding relations between the two countries. But it did not drastically affect ties.
"The Obama White House shows an inordinate - one might say obsessive - amount of concern for other countries' sensitivities," the right-wing Washington Times said in an editorial on Tuesday. "America need not jettison its commitment to freedom just to curry favour with some foreign leaders."
The Wall Street Journal noted that in nearly nine months in office, Obama has found time to meet with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Vladimir Putin, but not the Dalai Lama, a peaceful religious leader who has long been a friend to the US
