DHARAMSALA, November 15 – The Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay called on the US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at the latter’s office in the Capitol Building on Friday.
Sangay, according to the official website of the exile Tibetan government, discussed with the Senator the current situation inside Tibet and the next visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Washington DC. “I have met His Holiness the Dalai Lama several times. He is a remarkable figure. What is happening in Tibet is very sad,”Senator Reid was quoted as saying. Sangay spoke about his taking over the reins of the exile Tibetans’ political leadership and his administration’s efforts to draw world attention on the Tibet issue. Sangay was accompanied by North America Representative Kaydor Aukatsang and his Personal Asiistant Jigme Namgyal.
During his stay in Washington DC area, Sangay met with several other important members of the US government including Congressman Ed Royce – Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. During his earlier visits to Washington, Sangay had met with House Speaker John Boehner, Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senator John Kerry, the then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Tibetan PM (known in Tibetan as Sikyong) stopped over in New York on November 11 en-route to Washington DC for his fourth official tour on November 12. In New York he met with two senior editorial board members of The Wall Street Journal, former Senator Joe Lieberman and Nicholas Kristoff, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times. “Great chat today with Lobsang Sangay, Tibetan leader, about escalating repression in Tibet. Sad to see the oppression there,” Kristoff tweeted after the meeting to his close to 1.5 million followers.
The Sikyong also met with Maria Otero and Paula Dobriansky – the two former US Under Secretaries and Special Coordinators for Tibetan Issues, key staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren with whom he discussed immigration-related issues.
The Sikyong spoke of his administration’s CAN – the three-phased integrated approach of Consolidation, Action and Negotiations (or dialogue) that serves as a broad strategic policy road map for the current Tibetan Administration.
