Barack Obama receives the Dalai Lama despite warning from China

President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama in the White House yesterday, despite China issuing a last-minute warning to Washington to call off the meeting.

The encounter took place in the Map Room on the ground floor of the president’s residence and not the Oval Office, which Obama usually uses to meet foreign leaders and visiting dignitaries. The arrangement was apparently intended to highlight the Tibetan spiritual leader’s capacity as a cultural and religious leader instead of a political one.

Still, it was the US National Security Council, not the White House, that announced the meeting took place.

“The president is currently meeting w/His Holiness the DalaiLama in his capacity as an internationally respected religious & cultural leader,” the council said on Twitter.

There were no sightings of the Dalai Lama arriving at the White House and in a sign of its diplomatic sensitivity, the Obama administration ruled that the meeting would be closed to the press.

Last night in Beijing, a senior military official voiced China’s objection to the meeting, following the foreign ministry’s warning to Washington.

General Fan Changlong, one of the two vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission, told the visiting US Army chief of staff, Ray Odierno, of “China’s serious stance on the planned meeting between US President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama”, Xinhua reported.