Ottawa ignores Chinese request to shun ‘separatist’ Opening centre for peace
By Peter O’Neil
OTTAWA – The Conservative government is sending at least two senior government representatives to Vancouver on Saturday to honour the Dalai Lama’s visit to Canada, despite China’s objections.
Calgary MP Jason Kenney, once an outspoken critic of China’s human rights policy and now Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s parliamentary secretary, will meet privately with Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader on Saturday morning.
“This is essentially a courtesy meeting … this is not a political meeting,” Mr. Kenney said yesterday. “It’s greeting a respected world figure to Canada, and I quite frankly don’t know what we might end up discussing, but obviously I think it’s appropriate for Canadians to offer a friendly welcome to an important international figure.”
Immigration Minister Monte Solberg will attend a public gathering to hear the Dalai Lama speak on Saturday.
But Mr. Solberg will not meet with the Nobel laureate, who is viewed by China as a political activist and separatist, said Lesley Harmer, the Minister’s director of communications.”
Zhang Weidong, minister and counsellor at China’s embassy in Ottawa, said he has already urged the Canadian government not to meet the Dalai Lama privately or even attend his public events.
“We hope [Mr. Solberg] will not go,” Mr. Weidong said.
The Dalai Lama, who has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet inside China, arrives in Vancouver today for a three-day visit to open the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education.
China says the Dalai Lama, who in June became the third foreigner in history to be given honorary Canadian citizenship, is not just a religious leader.
“Certainly, from the bottom of his heart he is advocating the separation from the mainland of China,” Mr. Weidong said.
This year Mr. Harper specifically excluded China — an economic powerhouse that is accused of severe human rights violations — when his campaign platform promised to “expand trade agreements with Japan and India and other democratic trade partners in the Asia-Pacific region.”
The Chinese government was also angered when the new government supported a Tory MP’s motion, passed unanimously in June, calling for the Dalai Lama to be recognized as an honorary Canadian citizen.
Mr. Weidong said China “regrets” that decision by Parliament and noted without being specific: “There are a lot of troublesome issues on the table.”
He said political problems over such matters as the future of Tibet and Taiwan — one Tory backbencher tried last year to pass a bill viewed by China as recognizing Taiwan’s sovereignty — could negatively influence ongoing talks aimed at giving Canada access to China’s potentially enormous outbound tourism market.
Canada has been seeking approved destination status from Beijing since 1999, when only a handful of countries had such agreements, which allow Chinese firms to easily organize tour groups to signatory countries.
Now more than 100 countries have struck agreements, though tourists are currently travelling to just 81 of them, Zuo Wenxng, media spokeswoman for China’s embassy in Ottawa, said this year.
Mr. Weidong was asked if political and human rights issues are negatively influencing the tourism negotiations.
“I don’t think you can link these two too closely, but certainly the environment — the atmosphere — will have some effects, impacts,” he said. “If two persons are very friendly then they can solve everything, but if they have some trouble in other fields, certainly the relationship will be influenced.”
Mr. Weidong said he hopes the new government takes steps to fulfill the commitments made by the former Liberal government after former prime minister Paul Martin met in Ottawa with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The two governments promised to double Canada’s trade with China to US$30-billion by 2010.
“The new government of Canada is trying to do something to speak to the policy towards China, but we will have to wait and see. And we hope that the new government will do something to promote the bilateral relationship and to at least keep to what we have agreed to last year.”
The recognition had previously been given to only two people — former South African leader Nelson Mandela and Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who helped save the lives of thousands of Jews during the Second World War.
