Tibet’s exiled Dalai Lama says he wants to meet US president-elect Donald Trump
Any trip would anger Beijing, which views the Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner as a separatist
The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said on Wednesday that he would visit US president-elect Donald Trump, a meeting that would infuriate Beijing which views the Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk as a dangerous separatist.
The Dalai Lama said during a visit to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator that he had always considered the United States a “leading nation of the free world” when asked about the US presidential election.
“I think there are some problems to go to United States, so I will go to see the new president,” he told reporters, without elaborating.
President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama at the White House in June despite a warning by China that it would damage diplomatic relations. It was Obama’s fourth White House meeting with the Dalai Lama in the past eight years.
The Dalai Lama brushed off some of the US election campaign rhetoric.
“Sometimes I feel during election the candidate has more freedom to express. Once elected, having the responsibility, then they have to tell you their sort of vision, their works according to reality.”
China regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist, although he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland Tibet, which Communist Chinese troops “peacefully liberated” in 1950.
China has been angered by Mongolia’s decision to allow him to visit. Mongolia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to the Montsame news agency that the government had nothing to do with the trip, which they said was arranged by Mongolian Buddhists.
After the Dalai Lama’s visit to Mongolia in 2006, China briefly cancelled flights between Beijing and Ulan Bator.
Beijing frequently expresses its anger with countries that host the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against the Chinese.
Rights groups and exiles accuse China of trampling on the religious and cultural rights of the Tibetan people, charges strongly denied by Beijing, which says its rule has brought prosperity to a once backward region.
