China blames France, EU for summit cancellation

Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Associated Press
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
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BEIJING (AP) — China said Thursday French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to meet with the Dalai Lama — hated by Beijing — left it no option but to pull out of an upcoming China-European Union summit.

The official logo of the French presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2008.

Sarkozy's decision "deprived the EU-China summit of the required good atmosphere and made it impossible for it to obtain the anticipated result," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement posted on the ministry's Web site.

"We resolutely oppose the Dalai traveling to other countries in any capacity to carry out activities aimed at splitting China. We resolutely oppose foreign leaders having any form of contact with the Dalai," Qin said.

The cancellation, first announced Wednesday by would-be summit host France, was a dramatic example of the lengths to which Beijing will go to try to internationally isolate Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader. The Dalai Lama fled the Himalayan region for India amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Pulling out of the summit also suggests that countering criticism on Tibet and boxing in the Dalai Lama are bigger priorities for China's communist leaders than working with the EU and nations like France on solutions to the global financial crisis. The diplomatic snub may also be intended as a warning to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to tread carefully on the prickly question of Tibet.

Sarkozy was to host the EU-China summit — scheduled for Monday in the city of Lyon — because France holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had been due to attend.

The summit would have come just five days before Sarkozy's long-awaited meeting with the Dalai Lama. Despite China's ire, the meeting will go ahead, French government spokesman Luc Chatel said Wednesday.

At a regularly scheduled news conference Thursday, Qin insisted China wasn't to blame for the impasse and called on France to "not do things that hurt the Chinese people's feelings."

"There is an old saying in China that whoever causes the problem should solve the problem," Qin said.

The Dalai Lama will visit the Czech Republic, Belgium and Poland from Saturday, his spokesman Tenzin Taklha said. China's ire seems mostly directed at Sarkozy's plans to meet the Tibetan leader at a Dec. 6 ceremony in Gdansk, Poland, to honor Lech Walesa, the Polish founder of the Solidarity pro-democracy movement that helped bring down communism.

In recent months, China has hardened its resistance toward the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner's calls for greater autonomy for his homeland, largely in response to a widespread anti-Chinese uprising in Tibet earlier this year.

China says Tibet has been part of its territory for 700 years, although many Tibetans say they were effectively independent for most of that time.

The Dalai Lama remains deeply revered among Tibetans despite Beijing's relentless attempts to vilify him.

Associated Press Writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.