Washington: US President Barack Obama hosted exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House on Thursday, drawing an angry reaction from China and risking further damage to strained Sino-US ties.
Obama used his first presidential meeting with the Dalai Lama to press China, under international criticism for its Tibet policies, to preserve Tibetan identity and respect human rights.
He sat down with the Dalai Lama, reviled by the Chinese government as a dangerous separatist, in the face of wider tensions over US weapons sales to Taiwan, China's currency practices and Internet censorship.
While defying Beijing's demands to scrap the talks and showing a willingness to irritate an increasingly assertive China, the White House took pains to keep the encounter low-key, barring media coverage. But it later posted a photo on its official website of the two men side by side in conversation.
Beijing said it was "strongly dissatisfied" about the meeting and expected Washington to take steps to put bilateral relations back on a healthy course.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the meeting "violated the US government's repeated acceptance that Tibet is a part of China and it does not support Tibetan independence".
Monks living in Tongren, an overwhelmingly ethnic Tibetan part of the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai, set off fireworks for a second night to celebrate.
"This is great news for the Tibetans," one monk told Reuters. "We don't care that it makes the government angry. It makes us very happy that Obama met him."
Beijing did not threaten retaliation and its response was in line with past denunciations of US dealings with the Dalai Lama. But the visit could complicate Obama's efforts to secure China's help on key issues such as imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and forging a new global accord on climate change.
Senior Chinese military officers recently had proposed their country possibly sell part of its huge stockpile of US bonds to punish Washington for the a proposed $6.4 billion arms sale to self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
"The thought process is definitely there, and it's worrying," said T.J. Marta, president of Marta on the Markets, a financial research firm in Scotch Plains, New Jersey,
China did in fact reduce its holdings of US Treasuries to $755.4 billion in November, seen by some analysts as a sign of protest at US policies.
But with China ranked as the United States's second-biggest creditor to the United States, White House economic adviser Larry Summers played down the significance of Beijing's $34 billion paring-back of its portfolio.
Adding to tensions, Obama vowed recently to address currency issues with Beijing and to "get much tougher" with China on trade. Washington complains that China keeps its currency undervalued, hurting the competitiveness of American goods.
OBAMA PRAISE FOR DALAI LAMA
After the 70-minute meeting, the White House said Obama "commended the Dalai Lama's ... commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government".
Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
Obama encouraged China and the Dalai Lama's envoys to keep up efforts to resolve their differences through negotiations, despite recent talks having yielded little progress.
The White House said Obama and the Dalai Lama also "agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China".
"We are fully committed to remain in the People's Republic of China," the Dalai Lama told reporters. But he reiterated his longstanding call for "meaningful autonomy."
By going ahead with the meeting over Chinese objections, Obama may have wanted to show his resolve against Beijing after facing criticism at home for being too soft with China's leaders on his trip there in November.
On the eve of the Dalai Lama's visit, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted the United States and China -- the world's largest and third-biggest economies -- have a "mature relationship" capable of withstanding disagreements.
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