THE Dalai Lama is known for gentle humour. So he should appreciate the faintly comic sleights of protocol with which the White House handles his visits to Washington. The Vice-President receives him; then the President 'drops by', as if for a chance cup of tea and a chat.
Thus the fiction is preserved that a man who excites almost as much loathing in Beijing as Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui has not been officially received by Bill Clinton. No one is fooled - least of all the Chinese authorities, who protest each time. But the US is trying to repair relations with Beijing without being forced into new concessions. With such little touches of farce, Washington sends the mixed signals it wants China to receive.
The message is that Mr Clinton will not be more accommodating to Beijing than before. But he will not risk any initiative, either - and that is a pity. The Dalai Lama has provided him with a line to explore. He has called for closer relations, but also pressed the US administration to encourage talks between China and his government-in-exile. Beijing does not want talks. It has called for all-out struggle against the Dalai Lama. It refuses to recognise his spiritual authority (to the extent of rejecting his choice of reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's second highest figure). It conducts a programme of ethnic swamping, bringing in thousands of Han Chinese to overwhelm native Tibetans and their culture, and it ruthlessly suppresses protests.
Such policies are counter-productive. The best way to pacify Tibet would be to recognise the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama and meet his demand for Tibetan autonomy over domestic affairs under Chinese sovereignty. That autonomy was conceded under the 17-point Agreement of 1951, but was repudiated by both sides after Tibetans rose at China's flouting of its provisions.
Reviving the agreement, reinstating the Dalai Lama and offering guarantees of freedom of religion and assembly and other rights given to Hong Kong would help China's international reputation.
