Dalai Lama meets French first lady, foreign minister

Friday 22 August 2008

The Dalai Lama ends his controversial 12-day visit to France by meeting with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to inaugurate a Buddhist temple. President Nicolas Sarkozy declined to be there, but his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will attend.

Capping a controversial visit to France during the Beijing Olympics, the Dalai Lama meets with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for the inauguration of a Buddhist temple in a southern French town Friday. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy has declined to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader.

The Dalai Lama is also expected to meet with French Human Rights Minister Rama Yade.

The Tibetan spiritual leader’s 12-day visit to France sparked furor in Beijing, with China warning Sarkozy that any personal meeting with the Dalai Lama would have "serious consequences" for bilateral relations between France and China. On Wednesday, Beijing warned France to prudently deal with the "important and sensitive" issue of Tibet.

The French opposition Socialist Party has slammed what they see as the “permanent incoherence” of the government’s stance on Tibet. In April, Yade had declared that Sarkozy would attend the Beijing Olympics on three conditions, including a halt to violence against civilians and the launch of talks with the Tibetan spiritual leader. The French government later denied these conditions had been set.

On August 8, Sarkozy attended the opening of the Beijing Olympics despite the decision of European counterparts, such as British PM Gordon Brown and German chancellor Angela Merkel, not to attend the ceremony.

During his visit to France, the Tibetan spiritual leader was met with muted enthusiasm by the French government. Denied an official welcome at the Senate, the Dalai Lama was received in an ordinary office at the Senate on August 13. In an interview with Le Figaro, the right-wing MP Lionnel Luca, president of the French parliamentary commission on Tibet, slammed the welcome as “shameful.”

In an interview with the French daily Le Monde, the Dalai Lama declared that he had not come to Paris with “a political agenda” and had come to work on the “promotion of human values and dialogue between religions.” However, he hoped that after the Olympic Games, Sarkozy, as head of the rotating presidency of the European Union, will make some “constructive proposals to the Chinese government.”