Re: Corrected: Obama to meet Dalai Lama despite Chinese warnings
- From: "Alexx" <alexx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 18:07:57 +0800
You will be happy if you are pro-lama and anti-China.
"Peter Terpstra" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1655515.QJbFj6T6tg@xxxxxxxxx
Corrected: Obama to meet Dalai Lama despite Chinese warnings
Wed Feb 3, 2010 10:27am EST
Corrects tenth graph to make clear not all 30 firms are U.S.
By Chris Buckley and Doug Palmer
BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama still plans to
meet the Dalai Lama, the White House said on Tuesday, despite China's
warning that such a meeting would hurt ties already strained by U.S.
weapons
sales to Taiwan.
Digging in on two points of discord, China vowed to impose unspecified
sanctions against U.S. companies selling arms to Taiwan and said any
meeting
between Obama and the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader would hurt bilateral
ties.
The White House shrugged off Beijing's warning.
"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he
would
meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman
Bill Burton told reporters traveling with Obama to New Hampshire.
"We expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can
work on areas of mutual concern such as climate, the global economy and
non-
proliferation and discuss frankly and candidly those areas where we
disagree."
China has become increasingly vocal in opposing meetings between foreign
leaders and the Dalai Lama, who Beijing deems a dangerous separatist. A
meeting between the Tibetan leader and Obama would raise tensions between
the world's biggest and third-biggest economies.
Ties between the United States and China have also soured over trade and
currency quarrels, cyber security and control of the Internet, and
Beijing's
jailing of dissidents.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington wanted to
"work
through" disputes in various bilateral meetings the United States has with
China.
"You have two of the most powerful nations on earth and our interests
coincide in many areas and our interests collide occasionally in a handful
of those," he told reporters.
A senior Democratic senator said on Tuesday he had asked 30 companies,
including Apple, Facebook and Skype, for information on their human rights
practices in China in the aftermath of Google's decision to no longer
cooperate with Chinese Internet censorship efforts.
"Google sets a strong example in standing up to the Chinese government's
continued failure to respect the fundamental human rights of free
expression
and privacy," Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin said.
Google, the world's top Internet search engine, said last month it would
not
abide by Beijing-mandated censorship of its Chinese-language search engine
and might quit the Chinese market entirely because of cyber attacks from
China.
Recent cyber attacks on Google were a "wake-up call" and neither the
government nor the private sector can fully protect the U.S.
infrastructure,
Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday.
"Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with
extraordinary sophistication," he said in written testimony for a Senate
intelligence committee hearing.
"China's aggressive cyber activities" were among challenges posed by the
Chinese military, Blair added.
'DAMAGE TRUST'
There had been expectations that Obama would meet the Dalai Lama as early
as
this month, when the Tibetan leader visits the United States. The White
House has not announced a schedule.
Zhu Weiqun, a vice minister of the United Front Work Department of China's
ruling Communist Party, said Beijing would vehemently oppose a meeting.
"If the U.S. leader chooses this time to meet the Dalai Lama, that would
damage trust and cooperation between our two countries, and how would that
help the United States surmount the current economic crisis?" said Zhu,
whose department steers party policy over ethnic issues.
China routinely opposes meetings between the Dalai Lama and foreign
leaders,
especially after violent unrest spread across Tibetan areas in March 2008.
Beijing blamed the Dalai Lama's "clique" for the turmoil, a charge he
repeatedly rejected.
Previous U.S. presidents, including Obama's predecessor George W. Bush,
have
met the Dalai Lama, drawing angry words from Beijing but no substantive
reprisals.
But when French President Nicolas Sarkozy would not pull out of meeting
the
Dalai Lama while his country held the rotating presidency of the European
Union in late 2008, China hit back by canceling a summit with the EU.
The Dalai Lama has said he wants a high level of genuine autonomy for his
homeland, which he fled in 1959. China says his demands amount to calling
for outright independence.
China recently hosted talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama but they
achieved
little.
The United States says it accepts Tibet is a part of China but wants
Beijing
to sit down with the Dalai Lama to address their differences over the
region's future.
TAIWAN ARMS SALES
Beijing is already irate over U.S. proposals last week to sell $6.4
billion
of weapons to Taiwan, the island that China treats as an illegitimate
breakaway province.
The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing
in
1979 but Washington remains Taiwan's biggest backer and is obliged by the
1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help in the island's defense.
Blair told the Senate intelligence hearing that China-Taiwan ties were now
"relatively stable and positive" with progress on economic deals across
the
Taiwan Strait.
"Nevertheless, the military imbalance continues to grow, further
underscoring the potential limits to cross-Strait progress," he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu on Tuesday repeated Beijing's
threat to impose "corresponding sanctions" against U.S. companies that
sell
arms to Taiwan, saying the firms had "ignored China's opposition."
He offered no details on how China would impose sanctions.
Companies that could be affected by Chinese sanctions include Sikorsky
Aircraft Corp, a unit of United Technologies Corp; Lockheed Martin Corp;
Raytheon Co; and McDonnell Douglas, a unit of Boeing Co.
Bruce Lemkin, deputy under-secretary of the U.S. Air Force, said China had
over-reacted to the arms sales.
"The U.S. has been consistent with our stated policy and we carry out
those
policies," he said. "So certainly we believe that China should continue to
work with us on issues of mutual concern and to work with Taiwan."
China says the arms dispute will also damage cooperation with the United
States over international issues. Washington has sought stronger Chinese
support over several hotspots, chiefly the nuclear ambitions of Iran and
North Korea.
A former senior U.S. diplomat earlier told Reuters that China may not
follow
up strong words with strong measures.
"Let's watch what they do, not what they say, because sometimes tough
words
in China are a substitute for tough action," said Susan Shirk, a professor
specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the University of California,
San
Diego.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6123QL20100203?type=politicsNews
--
Amnesty International Report 2009 on China:
http://report2009.amnesty.org/en/regions/asia-pacific/china
.
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