BY BOB HARVEY
Alanis Morissette will get a second chance next month to introduce the Dalai Lama to her home town.
The exiled Tibetan leader will be in Ottawa April 21-24 as part of his Canadian supporters’ continuing attempts to persuade a Canadian prime minister to broker talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and China.
His only public talk will take place at the Civic Centre April 24.
Ms. Morissette will give a brief performance, and introduce the Dalai Lama. She is a longtime supporter of Tibetans’ fight for freedom from Chinese rule and was scheduled to be his emcee during a 2002 Ottawa visit that was cancelled because of an illness.
The Canada-Tibet Committee has obtained the signatures of 130 MPs in support of its attempt to persuade Prime Minister Paul Martin to act as an honest broker between representatives of the Dalai Lama and China.
In 2002, 88 MPs signed a similar petition aimed at thenprime minister Jean Chrétien. The committee’s goal this time is to get the support of 150 MPs, more than half the House of Commons, before the Dalai Lama arrives.
Neither Mr. Martin nor Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham has indicated he will meet His Holiness.
When he was prime minister, Mr. Chrétien refused to meet the Dalai Lama during his 1993 visit for fear of endangering trade with China.
China invaded Tibet in 1949. Ten years later, after a popular uprising, the Dalai Lama and 80,000 other Tibetans fled the country for India. Monasteries and other historic buildings have been destroyed and Tibetans estimate that 1.2 million of their countrymen have died as a result of the Chinese occupation.
