Obama, Dalai Lama to meet at White House
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A couple of Nobel Peace Prize winners will meet Thursday at the White House: the president of the United States, and the Dalai Lama, exiled Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibet.
President Obama’s meeting in the Map Room today with the Dalai Lama isn’t so much about the words the two share as it is the message they send to Tibetans and China.
Obama, remember, was awarded his Nobel last year for the promise of peace that he presented in the world, rather than for any realization of it. The 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the prize in 1989, two years before the protests in China that culminated in a crackdown at Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese, we’re told, will be ‘watching closely to see how great a stage Obama offers’’ the Dalai Lama, whom Chinese authorities view as a dangerous separatist.
When former President George W. Bush met with the Dalai Lama, they convened their talks in the private residence of the White House -- though Bush made a high-profile appearance with the 2007 awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to a leader exiled since 1959.
Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama in the Map Room, where the great charts of history are collected -- including one old map depicting the fronts of the armies of World War II. The two will not meet in the Oval Office, which the president reserves for meetings with other world leaders.
‘The optics of this thing are incredibly important to the Chinese,’ Michael Green, Bush’s former senior Asia adviser, told the Associated Press. ‘The Chinese government is preoccupied with protocol and how things look.’
The U.S. needs China on many fronts -- in the negotiations with North Korea and the standoff with Iran over nuclear development, in the battle against global warming. It’s not only today’s visit, but also the U.S. agreement to sell arms to Taiwan that has heightened tensions between the two superpowers lately.
The Dalai Lama’s envoy, Lodi Gyari, explains that even the private meeting with Obama is a boost for Tibetans feeling marginalized by China. Green says just the ‘fact that they spend time together in an intimate setting means everything for the Tibetan cause.’
The Dalai Lama has met with American presidents for two decades. Bush broke the tradition of private meetings when he appeared at a public presentation in 2007 of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland to India in 1959 with his family and dozens of others during a failed uprising against China. Chinese troops had taken over Tibet in 1951.
George H.W. Bush was the first U.S. president to meet with the Dalai Lama -- in 1991, two years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The White House allowed no photos of the meeting.
Bill Clinton avoided formal visits and instead dropped by the Dalai Lama’s meetings with other officials. Republicans criticized him for not formally receiving the Dalai Lama. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now the secretary of State, also met with the Dalai Lama in the White House.
-- Mark Silva
The Associated Press contributed to this report.