Bush urges China to meet Dalai Lama

President George W. Bush defended yesterday his plan to appear at an award ceremony for the Dalai Lama in the face of Chinese objections and urged Beijing to open talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader China views as a separatist.

The Dalai Lama is set to to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honour, by the US Congress in an award China angrily denounced as a "farce" that would hurt relations between Beijing and Washington.

President Bush, who will attend the ceremony on Capitol Hill in the first public appearance by a US president with the Dalai Lama, said he was going because he supported religious freedom and admired the Tibetan monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. "I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation's interest," he told a news conference hours before the ceremony.

"I've also told them that I think it's in their interest to meet with the Dalai Lama and will say so at the ceremony today in Congress," he said.

"If they were to sit down with the Dalai Lama, they would find him to be a man of peace and reconciliation," President Bush added.

A smiling Dalai Lama emerged from his White House meeting with Mr Bush on Tuesday and shrugged off the Chinese criticism, telling reporters: "That always happens."

In Beijing, atheist China's top religious affairs official condemned the medal award as a "farce" and called on the Dalai Lama to abandon dreams of independence for Tibet.

Tibet has been ruled by China since Communist troops invaded it in 1950, and the government deals harshly with Tibetans who press for greater political and religious freedom.

"The protagonist of this farce is the Dalai Lama," Ye Xiaowen, director-general of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, told reporters yesterday on the sidelines of the Communist Party's five-yearly conclave.

The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since fleeing his predominantly Buddhist homeland in 1959 after a failed uprising against communist rule.