China Rebukes U.S. Over Visit by Dalai Lama

BEIJING —  China said Thursday that it had complained to the United States for allowing the Dalai Lama to meet U.S. leaders in Washington this week, but it stopped short of saying the meetings would harm warming ties.

“We are strongly dissatisfied with the United States for allowing the Dalai Lama to carry out splittist activities in the United States and with U.S. leaders for meeting him,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Cui Tiankai said.

“We have already expressed our serious and principled stance to the U.S. side,” Cui said at a regular news briefing.

President Clinton, who met with the Dalai Lama at the White House on Wednesday, told the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader that he will urge China to open a direct dialogue with him.

But Clinton, wary of derailing the new Sino-U.S. rapprochement, avoided a full meeting with the Dalai Lama, instead “dropping in” on talks between the Tibetan monk and Vice President Al Gore.

“We express our adamant opposition to any actions that tolerate or support the Dalai Lama’s activities to split the motherland,” Cui said.

Cui did not say if the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Clinton would affect a planned trip by Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen later this month to Washington, where he is to hold talks with the U.S. president.

Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed revolt against Chinese rule, of seeking to split the Himalayan region from China.