MOSCOW – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, had decided not to come to Russia — but Russia would consider his visa application if he wanted to go ahead with the trip.
“We would be ready to examine such a request if the trip was purely pastoral and religious in nature and there was no plan for contact between the Dalai Lama and officials,” Lavrov told Russia’s NTV television.
Lavrov was speaking a day after a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile said the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had been invited to give religious discourses in Kalmykia, a mainly Buddhist republic in southern Russia.
But Lavrov said he understood that the visit was off.
“I heard that today there was an announcement that the Dalai Lama had decided not to request a visa to visit (the Kalmyk capital) Elista. It’s his decision, and we respect it,” he said.
Moscow has been hesitant to allow entry to the Dalai Lama to avoid a rift over the issue with China, which imposed communist rule on Tibet in 1950 after invading the Himalayan region.
The Dalai Lama fled in 1959 to India where he now runs the government-in-exile and a non-violent campaign for greater autonomy in his homeland.
China considers the Dalai Lama a separatist leader in religious robes. Russia, faced with a separatist revolt in Chechnya, says it considers Tibet an inseparable part of China.
The spokesman for Tibet’s government-in-exile said on Thursday the Dalai Lama did not want to embarrass any government.
Russia has around one million Buddhist citizens, mainly in Siberia and near the Caspian Sea, who consider the Dalai Lama their spiritual leader.
