PM should broker peace between China, and exiled leader
BY DANIEL TENCER
WITH FILES FROM THE VANCOUVER PROVINCE
A parliamentary committee organizing a visit to Canada by the Dalai Lama plans to formally request that Prime Minister Paul Martin meet with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
But Chinese government officials have responded with hostility to the visit, calling it inappropriate.
An official with the Chinese embassy, who requested anonymity, compared the Tibet situation with Quebec separatism.
“If somebody from Quebec went to China or (the) United States, asking the U.S. government to support Quebec independence from Canada, what would (be) your response?”
In a written statement to the Citizen, the Chinese Embassy denounced plans for the visit, and warned that “Tibetan affairs are the internal affairs of China that brook no foreign interference.”
“The Dalai Lama is not simply a religious figure, but was once the biggest serf owner in old Tibet, and now a politician in exile engaged in activities aimed at splitting China and undermining national unity,” the statement read.
The Montreal-based Canada-Tibet Committee is pushing for the prime minister to meet with the 68-year-old Dalai Lama who, as a leader of the Buddhist faith, has developed a large following throughout the world in the past few decades.
Both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. president Bill Clinton have met with the Dalai Lama. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien met with him in 1990, but refused to do so in 1993 for fear of jeopardizing trade relations.
Melanie Gruer, the prime minister’s press secretary, said Mr. Martin had not yet decided if he would meet with the Dalai Lama. She could not say when a decision would be made.
However, a representative of the Foreign Affairs Department said no official meetings were scheduled during what the representative described as a “private” visit by the Tibetan leader.
The Dalai Lama will be in Canada in April on a crosscountry tour that will take him to Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. He is to receive an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University, and is supposed to meet with parliamentarians in Ottawa.
Tenzin Dargyal, a spokesman for the Canada-Tibet Committee, described the Chinese embassy’s criticism as “predictable.”
The committee says Mr. Martin should agree to broker a peace deal between the Dalai Lama and China, which occupied Tibetan territory in 1949.
Representatives of the committee said 126 members of Parliament, including some who have become cabinet ministers, have over the years signed a letter encouraging high-level contact with the Dalai Lama.
“The prime minister says he wants to make sure we play an important role in the world and here is someone who is considered a world leader,” says Liberal MP Herb Dhaliwal, the former natural resources minister who is now sitting on a parliamentary committee organizing aspects of the Dalai Lama’s visit.
Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, one of the MPs who signed the letter encouraging contact with the Dalai Lama, has no plans to meet with the Tibetan leader, a spokesman said.
The Dalai Lama, who along with 80,000 other Tibetans has been living in exile from Tibet since 1959, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his efforts to resolve the ongoing acrimony between Tibet and the People’s Republic of China.
