Wonder whether His Holiness could up the odds of scheduling a visit if he also got interested in some weapons purchases?
DC
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [Could this be the last straw for the NPR set?]
>
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100403262.html>
>
> Obama's Meeting With the Dalai Lama Is Delayed
> Move Appears to Be A Nod to Chinese
> By John Pomfret
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Monday, October 5, 2009
>
> In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan
> representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President
> Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao,
> scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and
> other sources familiar with the talks.
>
> For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit
> Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has
> been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at
> the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush
> became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony
> at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold
> Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.
>
> The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy
> to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of
> China's human rights and financial policies as well as backing efforts to
> elevate China's position in international institutions, such as the
> International Monetary Fund. Obama administration officials have termed the
> new policy "strategic reassurance," which entails the U.S. government taking
> steps to convince China that it is not out to contain the emerging Asian
> power.
>
> Before a visit to China in February, for example, Secretary of State Hillary
> Rodham Clinton said advocacy for human rights could not "interfere with the
> global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security
> crisis" -- a statement that won her much goodwill in Beijing. U.S. Treasury
> officials have also stopped accusing China of artificially deflating the
> value of its currency to make its exports more attractive.
>
> In explaining their reluctance to meet the Dalai Lama now, U.S. officials
> told Tibetan representatives that they wanted to work with China on critical
> issues, including nuclear weapons proliferation in North Korea and Iran,
> said an Asian diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks who spoke on the
> condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
> Administration officials also hinted that they were considering selling a
> new tranche of weapons to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
>
> "They were worried about too many irritating factors all at once," said the
> Asian diplomat. "They didn't want to have too many things straining the
> relationship." What is not clear is whether the administration was bending
> to specific Chinese demands or whether it decided unilaterally, in the words
> of one participant in the talks, "to throw the Chinese a bone."
>
> A senior administration official denied that the Dalai Lama had sought a
> meeting with Obama in October and "instead he would like to see him in
> December." He said it was "counter-factual" to assume that a meeting had
> been postponed. The official briefed a reporter on the condition that his
> name not be used.
>
> U.S. officials also said they are not pulling punches with the Chinese. They
> have, however, indicated that they want to try something new on Tibet,
> figuring that the old policy -- of meeting with the Dalai Lama regularly and
> calling for substantive talks between China and his representatives -- had
> achieved little. American officials told Tibetan representatives that "this
> president is not interested in symbolism or photo ops but in deliverables,"
> the Asian diplomat said. "He wants something to come out of his efforts over
> Tibet, rather than just checking a box."
>
> Talks between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama, who fled China in
> 1959 after an anti-Chinese uprising, collapsed in 2008. There are signs that
> they might resume soon.
>
> What Did China Think?
>
> U.S. officials began to express doubts about the meeting between the Dalai
> Lama and Obama soon after the Group of 20 meeting in April when the United
> States and China agreed that Obama would visit Beijing later this year, the
> Asian diplomat said.
>
> Before that White House and State Department officials had told Tibetan
> representatives that it was simply a matter of finding the right day, the
> Asian diplomat said. "They said they would live with the meeting, would live
> with the Chinese being upset," he said. "But then there was strong
> push-back."
>
> The Tibetan representatives did not bend initially. So in May, retired U.S.
> diplomats got involved, meeting with prominent American friends of the
> Tibetan movement in an attempt to get them to exert pressure on the Dalai
> Lama and his representatives to relent, according to sources with direct
> knowledge of these interventions. Meanwhile, a string of Chinese delegations
> began contacting American academics and others close to the Tibetan movement
> in an effort to gauge whether Obama would have the meeting, said people who
> met with the Chinese. Ironically, according to participants in these talks,
> the Chinese had come to the conclusion that Obama was going to meet with the
> Dalai Lama in October and that the only issue was how the Tibetan leader
> would be received in the White House.
>
> "We've got the classic case of a Western government yet again conceding to
> Chinese pressure that is imaginary long after that Chinese pressure has
> ceased to exist," said Robert Barnett, a Tibetan expert at Columbia
> University. "The Chinese must be falling over themselves with astonishment
> at what Western diplomats will give them without being asked. I don't know
> what the poker analogy would be. 'Please, see all my cards and take my
> money, too?' "
>
> In August, Tibetan representatives laid out the issue for the Dalai Lama.
> There were dangers if he gave in to American pressure, the Asian diplomat
> said. One, it "could set a precedent and make China feel even more arrogant
> than it already is," the diplomat said. Two, it could make it more difficult
> for the Dalai Lama to meet with the heads of state of other countries. China
> has launched a worldwide effort to stop heads of state from hosting the
> Tibetan leader. The Dalai Lama is to travel to New Zealand and Australia
> later this year and has yet to secure a commitment from their leaders to
> meet. "A lot of smaller countries will have the best excuse," he said.
> "They'll say, 'Give us a break. How about the big United States?' "
>
> Finally, Tibetan officials worried about how Chinese authorities would
> portray the victory in China. "They would obviously tell the people of Tibet
> that His Holiness was rejected in Washington," the Asian diplomat said.
>
> Nonetheless, the Dalai Lama relented, the Asian diplomat said. "He said work
> with the Americans," the diplomat said. "He did not want to irritate them."
>
> Official Response
> In late August, Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's representative in Washington,
> met with Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and assistant to Obama, before she
> traveled to Dharmsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
> Gyari tried again to persuade the administration to accept a meeting in
> October.
>
> It didn't work. A second senior administration official pointed to Jarrett's
> visit to Dharmsala as a sign of how much Obama cares about Tibet.
>
> Jarrett met with the Dalai Lama on Sept. 13 and 14. The office of the Dalai
> Lama issued a positive statement about the meeting. In the third paragraph
> from the bottom was the sentence: "His Holiness is looking forward to
> meeting President Obama after his visit to China." The operative word was
> "after."
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