Obama puts off Dalai Lama meet

Next month, he will make history again, of a different sort. He will become the first president not to meet with the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan leader visits Washington.

Ever since April 1991, when then-President George H.W. Bush met the Nobel laureate, he has been received by the American president, regardless of party. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush met the Buddhist monk each time he came to the American capital.

However, China has been sending signals to warn President Obama not to meet with the Dalai Lama in October, when he is scheduled to visit Washington.

And last week the president sent a delegation led by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Under Secretary of State Maria Otero, who has been designated special coordinator for Tibetan issues, to Dharamsala in India to meet the Tibetan leader to explain the Obama administration's Tibet policy.

They explained that because Obama is scheduled to pay his first visit to China in November, it would be better not to meet the Dalai Lama in October. Instead, they said, there could be a meeting after Obama's China trip.

The Obama administration no doubt remembers that last year, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy defied China by announcing that he would meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, Beijing canceled a summit meeting with the European Union, of which Sarkozy at that time held the rotating presidency. That meeting was only rescheduled five months later.

Of course, the United States was in a much stronger position vis-a-vis China in the 1990s. Beijing was fearful of losing its most-favored-nation trading status and desirous of American support for it to join the World Trade Organization. Now, Beijing is Washington's biggest creditor and the United States wants China to continue to lend it money by buying Treasury bonds.

The American officials assured the Dalai Lama that President Obama would raise the Tibetan issue in his talks with Chinese leaders.

Ms. Jarrett also conveyed the president's commitment “to support the Tibetan people in protecting their distinct religious, linguistic and cultural heritage and securing respect for their human rights and civil liberties.” She also said that Washington would be in a better position to seek progress for the dialogue between representative of the Dalai Lama and Beijing, as well as improvements in human rights in Tibet, if there was a strong U.S.-China relationship.

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