Meeting with Dalai Lama not postponed: White House

Terming as "inaccurate" reports that Barack Obama has postponed his talks with the Dalai Lama, the White House has said the US president holds the Tibetan leader in great esteem and insisted that a meeting was never on the cards during the Nobel laureate's current trip here.

It also said that a strong Sino-US relationship will help the cause of the Tibetan people.
    
"Tibetan people know that our strong relationship with China helps them," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, as the mainstream US media tried to corner him on the issue of Obama postponing his meeting with the Dalai.

It has been a tradition since 1991 that the Tibetan spiritual leader meets the US president, whenever he visits Washington. This is for the first time since then that the US President is not meeting the Dalai during his Washington trip.
 
The US media has interpreted this as a change in the American policy towards Tibet and accused the Obama Administration of trying to appease the Chinese Government.

Both the Dalai Lama's special envoy and White House have refuted such reports and asserted that a meeting during the current trip of the Tibetan spiritual leader was never on the cards and it was decided long ago that the two leaders would meet after Obama's visit to China next month.

Gibbs said the statement that the Dalai Lama and his supporters put out was fully in support of a meeting that will take place later in the year.

"They understand the strong relationship -- the stronger relationship that we have with China benefits the Tibetan people. I saw something that said a meeting had been postponed, and that's simply inaccurate," Gibbs said.

The Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, Lodi Gyalsten Gyari, said on Monday that "from the outset, there has been no question of president Obama not at the appropriate time meeting His Holiness, whom he holds in great esteem.
    
"Taking a broader and long-term perspective, His Holiness agreed to meet the President after the November US-China Summit."

As such the Dalai Lama would now meet Obama after his trip to China in mid-November, Gyari said in a statement. "The Dalai Lama has always been supportive of American engagement with China. Our hope is that the cooperative US-Chinese relationship that president Obama's administration seeks will create conditions that support the resolution of the legitimate grievances of the Tibetan people," he said.

Gyari said the decision to send a high-level delegation headed by his senior advisor and close friend Valerie Jarrett, accompanied by Under Secretary Maria Otero, Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, to Dharamsala, indicates a new approach on Tibet by the US administration.